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News articles on China

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Mongabay.com news articles on china in blog format. Updated regularly.

China will not commit to CO2 limits
(7/6/2007) China will not commit to binding greenhouse gas emissions cuts, reports the BBC. Lu Xuedu, deputy director-general of China's Office of Global Environmental Affairs, told British parliamentarians that China does not presently have the "capability to make those commitments."


760,000 Chinese a year die from pollution
(7/4/2007) 760,000 Chinese die prematurely each year from polluted air and water, according to estimates to be released by the World Bank.


China to ban ozone-depleting CFCs
(6/28/2007) China has moved to ban the production of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), according to a statement from the country's environmental protection agency. The action is in accordance with the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of ozone layer-depleting products . China, which signed the agreement in 1991, says it will end all CFC production by 2010.


Industrialized countries outsource CO2 emissions to China
(6/22/2007) Facing criticism as it surpasses the U.S. as the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, China says that industrialized countries are hypocritical for criticizing its greenhouse gas emissions while buying its products, according to the Associated Press. China argues that developed countries are effectively outsourcing emissions by shifting manufacturing to its factories.


China surpasses the U.S. in CO2 emissions
(6/20/2007) China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions, reports the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (EEA), a group that advises the Dutch government.


Indo-Chinese tiger spotted in China for first time in years
(6/13/2007) Scientists captured a wild Indo-Chinese tiger on film in a nature reserve in China's southeastern Yunnan Province, reports the Worldwatch Institute.


NASA monitors China's Three Gorges Dam
(6/13/2007) Some call it the eighth wonder of world. Others say it's the next Great Wall of China. Upon completion in 2009, the Three Gorges Dam along China's Yangtze River will be the world's largest hydroelectric power generator and one of the few man-made structures so enormous that it's actually visible to the naked eye from space. NASA's Landsat satellites have provided detailed, vivid views of the dam since construction began in 1994.


98% of orangutan habitat gone in next 15 years
(6/11/2007) Indonesia is losing more than 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres) of forest a year to illegal loggers, states a new report from the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). The report, which estimates the value of illicit timbering at $4 billion annually, warns that 98 percent of Indonesia's lowland forests will be gone by 2022, putting species like the orangutan at risk of extinction in the wild. The report, Last stand of the Orang-utan: State of Emergency, was released Monday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting in The Hague.


Chinese demand drives global deforestation
(6/10/2007) From outside, Cameroon's Ngambe-Tikar forest looks like a compact, tangled mass of healthy emerald green foliage. But tracks between the towering tropical hardwood trees open up into car park-sized clearings littered with logs as long as buses. Forestry officers say the reserve is under attack from unscrupulous commercial loggers who work outside authorized zones and do not respect size limits in their quest for maximum financial returns.


Nobel prize winner debates future of nuclear power
(6/7/2007) Two renowned energy experts sparred in a debate over nuclear energy Wednesday afternoon at Stanford University. Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think tank, argued that energy efficiency and alternative energy sources will send nuclear power the way of the dinosaurs in the near future. Dr. Burton Richter, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in physics, said that nuclear would play an important part of the future energy portfolio needed to cut carbon emissions to fight global warming.


Can cattle ranchers and soy farmers save the Amazon?
(6/6/2007) John Cain Carter, a Texas rancher who moved to the heart of the Amazon 11 years ago and founded what is perhaps the most innovative organization working in the Amazon, Alianca da Terra, believes the only way to save the Amazon is through the market. Carter says that by giving producers incentives to reduce their impact on the forest, the market can succeed where conservation efforts have failed. What is most remarkable about Alianca's system is that it has the potential to be applied to any commodity anywhere in the world. That means palm oil in Borneo could be certified just as easily as sugar cane in Brazil or sheep in New Zealand. By addressing the supply chain, tracing agricultural products back to the specific fields where they were produced, the system offers perhaps the best market-based solution to combating deforestation. Combining these approaches with large-scale land conservation and scientific research offers what may be the best hope for saving the Amazon.


China Unveils Global Warming Initiative
(6/5/2007) Scientists documented 467 species, including 24 species believed new to science, during a rainforest survey in eastern Suriname, South America. The expedition, led by Conservation International (CI), was sponsored by two mining companies, BHP-Billiton Maatschappij Suriname (BMS) and Suriname Aluminium Company LLC (Suralco), hoping to mine the area for bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum. Conservation International said the Rapid Assessment Survey (RAP) will help "give miners guidance on protecting unique plants and animals during potential future development," according to a statement from the organization.


Polynesians brought chickens to Americas before Columbus
(6/4/2007) New DNS analysis shows that Polynesians introduced chickens to South America well before Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World. The evidence supports the theory that the Americas were visited by sea-faring groups from the East prior to the arrival of Europeans. Using carbon dating and analysis DNA to determine the origin of chicken bones discovered at El Arenal, an archaeological site in Chile, a team of researchers led by Alice Storey of the University of Auckland found that the birds were descended from Polynesian stock and were introduced at least 100 years before the arrival of Europeans on the continent. The findings undermine claims that chickens were native to South America or that they were introduced by Spanish or Portuguese explorers.


Globalization could save the Amazon rainforest
(6/3/2007) The Amazon basin is home to the world's largest rainforest, an ecosystem that supports perhaps 30 percent of the world's terrestrial species, stores vast amounts of carbon, and exerts considerable influence on global weather patterns and climate. Few would dispute that it is one of the planet's most important landscapes. Despite its scale, the Amazon is also one of the fastest changing ecosystems, largely as a result of human activities, including deforestation, forest fires, and, increasingly, climate change. Few people understand these impacts better than Dr. Daniel Nepstad, one of the world's foremost experts on the Amazon rainforest. Now head of the Woods Hole Research Center's Amazon program in Belem, Brazil, Nepstad has spent more than 23 years in the Amazon, studying subjects ranging from forest fires and forest management policy to sustainable development. Nepstad says the Amazon is presently at a point unlike any he's ever seen, one where there are unparalleled risks and opportunities. While he's hopeful about some of the trends, he knows the Amazon faces difficult and immediate challenges.


Greenpeace pressures China on global warming
(5/30/2007) Greenpeace stepped up the pressure on China to do something about its surging greenhouse gas emissions, launching a campaign that warns melting glaciers could hurt Chinese agriculture and hydroelectric projects. The environmental group cited a Chinese Academy of Sciences' projection that 80 percent of the glaciers in Tibet and the surrounding region could melt by 2035, though other research suggests more moderate melting.


Chinese support shark conservation, but still demand shark fin
(5/25/2007) There is growing public support in China for shark conservation measures, but little understanding of the role of shark finning in declining shark populations, reveals a survey by WildAid, an environmental group.


China city officials to get $258,000 bonus for environmental gains
(5/23/2007) Shanxi Province in China will pay city government officials 2 million yuan ($258,000) each if they are able to pull their cities out of the ranking of China's five most polluted cities, reports China state media. Cities that see their air quality improve 10 spots in the national ranking system, world reward city heads 2 million yuan ($258,000).


CO2 emissions growth surges as global energy efficiency falls
(5/21/2007) Worldwide growth in carbon dioxide emissions has doubled since the close of the 1990s, reports a study published in the early on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings suggest that the global economy is more dependent on fossil fuels than ever before, with carbon intensity--the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of economic output--decreasing after a period of increases.


Abalone poaching drives meth drug trade in South Africa
(5/20/2007) Abalone poaching helps drive the methamphetamine trade in South Africa, reports an article in The Wall Street Journal.


China tropical log imports jump at Jiangsu port
(5/16/2007) Logs imports through Zhangjiagang Port in Jiangsu Province, China have increased significantly in 2007, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) in its bi-weekly update.


China finds 7.5 billion barrel oilfield
(5/8/2007) PetroChina, Asia's largest oil and gas producer, announced the discovery of a 7.5 billion barrel oil field off the northeast coast of China. The find, in an undersea field in Bohai Bay, is the largest in Asia in four decades and will boost China's known oil reserves by 20 percent. Nevertheless, the discovery will not be enough to offset China's oil imports, which have surged in recent years due to a booming economy and rapid adoption of automobiles.


Carbon dioxide emissions lag 25% behind 2012 targets
(5/8/2007) The world is far behind carbon dioxide emissions targets set by the Kyoto Protocol reports the Little Green Data Book 2007, an annual publication put out by the World Bank. The publication notes that global carbon dioxide emissions have risen 19 percent since 1990, more than 25 percent behind goals set forth under the Kyoto Protocol, which called for a 5.2 percent reduction from 1990 levels.


Chinese traffic restrictions rapidly result in cleaner air
(4/30/2007) Chinese government restrictions on motorists during a three- day conference last fall cut Beijing's emissions of an important class of atmospheric pollutants by up to 40 percent, recent satellite observations indicate. The November restrictions are widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for efforts by the city to slash smog and airborne contaminants when China hosts the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.


U.S. and China fight plan to slow global warming
(4/30/2007) Claiming that costs of fighting global warming will be higher than consensus estimates, China and the United States are fighting plans to slow climate change, according to the Associated Press (AP). The countries also say the impacts of climate change will not be as severe as projected and want to raise the emissions cap of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 430 parts per million (ppm) proposed by the European Union to 445 ppm. Current CO2 levels stand around 381 ppm.


China uses 'green construction' for Tibet railway
(4/26/2007) To the surprise of many observers, China went to great lengths to minimize the environmental impact of its new Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the highest railway in the world. Still, despite these efforts there will likely be detrimental environmental effects from its construction, writes a team of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Science.


China to push for sustainable logging overseas
(4/25/2007) In a surprising move, China has developed guidelines for the establishment of sustainable forest plantations abroad by Chinese firms, according to the International Tropical Timber Organization's (ITTO) April 1 Tropical Timber Market Report. The move comes as China faces increasing criticism from environmental groups for pillaging the world's forests to feed its rapidly growing economy.


China to spend $2.1B to protect wetlands
(4/25/2007) China says it will spend more than $2.1 billion (16.5 billion yuan) to protect and restore its highly endangered wetlands over the next five years.


Less than 35 Amur leopard remain in the wild
(4/19/2007) A new census shows the world's most endangered cat, the Amur or Far Eastern leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), is on the brink of extinction with a wild population estimated at 25-34 individuals. "The recent census confirmed once again that the Amur leopard survives on very shaky ground," said Pavel Fomenko, biodiversity conservation program coordinator at the Far-Eastern branch of WWF in Russia.


China's demand for hardwood drives illegal logging says Greenpeace
(4/17/2007) Environmental group Greenpeace said on Tuesday China should take responsibility for illegal hardwood logging in Southeast Asia which supplied the raw materials for Chinese exports to the West.


Damage to Yangtze 'irreversible' says China
(4/16/2007) Pollution, dams and excessive boat traffic have caused an 'largely irreversible' decline in the aquatic ecology of the Yangtze says a report issued by China's official State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).


Palm oil doesn't have to be bad for the environment
(4/4/2007) As traditionally practiced in southeast Asia, oil palm cultivation is responsible for widespread deforestation that reduces biodiversity, degrades important ecological services, worsens climate change, and traps workers in inequitable conditions sometimes analogous to slavery. This doesn't have to be the case. Following examples set forth by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and firms like Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, a Malaysian palm oil producer, oil palm can be cultivated in a manner that helps mitigate climate change, preserves biodiversity, and brings economic opportunities to desperately poor rural populations.


Eco-friendly palm oil could help alleviate poverty in Indonesia
(4/3/2007) The Associated Press (AP) recently quoted Marcel Silvius, a climate expert at Wetlands International in the Netherlands, as saying palm oil is a failure as a biofuel. This would be a misleading statement and one that doesn't help efforts to devise a workable solution to the multiplicity of issues surrounding the use of palm oil.


The news of extinction: western media's response to the demise of the Baiji
(4/1/2007) The news came and went with an alacrity that I found alarming, almost jolting. I waited for weeks, faithfully; I could not believe that the initial announcement would be followed by nothing but silence on the issue, no rationalizations, no opinions, no discussions, no outpourings of grief. Just silence.


China may top U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions in 2007
(3/23/2007) China's carbon dioxide emissions may exceed those of the United States in 2007, making the country the world's largest greenhouse gas polluter, according to analysis of Chinese energy data.


Air pollution can reduce rainfall
(3/8/2007) Air pollution can reduce rainfall in mountainous areas according to research published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. 50 years of measurements at Mt. Hua near Xi'an, in central China, show that precipitation levels can be decreased by 30 to 50 percent during hazy conditions. The researchers say this is the result of high concentrations of particulates in the air which cause cloud droplets to be smaller and less likely to become raindrops.


Elephant poaching for ivory accelerates
(2/26/2007) Thousands of African elephants are being killed for their ivory tusks, according to a new study led by a biologist from the University of Washington. In a paper published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Samuel Wasser, director of the University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology, shows that elephants are being slaughtered at the highest rate since the international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989.


China misses pollution targets
(2/13/2007) China's environmental protection agency said that the country failed to meet any of its 2006 pollution control goals according to its web site. The State Environmental Protection (SEPA) admitted that economic growth actually caused the country to fall well behind its environmental targets.


Human ecological footprint to grow 34% by 2015 finds study
(2/8/2007) Population size and affluence are driving environmental degradation according to a new study published in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology. The authors say other widely cited drivers of environmental stress -- urbanization, economic structure, age distribution -- actually have relatively little impact.


Anti-China movement rises in Africa
(2/2/2007) Chinese firms doing business in Africa are starting see backlash from their rapid investment expansion on the continent according to an article in today's issue of The Wall Street Journal.


Tibetan Antelope Recovering
(2/1/2007) Once threatened by rampant poaching, the Tibetan antelope or chiru may be recovering according to legendary conservation biologist George Schaller, who just completed a 1,000-mile expedition across Tibet's remote Chang Tang region. Schaller, a biologist with the Bronx-zoo based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), says better law enforcement and growing conservation ethic in local communities may be the reason for the resurgence.


Live fish trade causing massive depletion of coral reef species
(1/24/2007) According to a new study conducted by Cambridge University researchers off the northern coast of Borneo, the live reef fish trade is having a major impact on marine populations.


China invests in $5.5B biofuels project in Borneo, New Guinea
(1/18/2007) China has agreed to invest in a $5.5 billion biofuels project on the islands of New Guinea and Borneo. The plan promises to be controversial among environmentalists who say that it will destroy some of the world's most biodiverse -- and threatened -- ecosystems on the planet.


China uses snake-based earthquake prediction system
(12/27/2006) A province in southern China has come up with a unique way to predict earthquakes: snakes. According to China Daily and as reported by Reuters, the earthquake bureau in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi province, has set up a 24-hour video feed to monitor the behavior of snakes at snake farms. The scientists say that snakes are particularly sensitive to vibrations caused by impending earthquakes.


Papua New Guinea log exports to China surge
(12/19/2006) Papua New Guinea (PNG) log exports surged in October according to the International Tropical Timber Organization's (ITTO) Tropical Timber Market Report.


China launches green buying policy
(12/19/2006) China's Ministry of Finance and the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) announced that starting in 2007, the country's central and provincial governments will prioritize their purchasing of environmentally friendly products and services.


China will continue search for 'extinct' baiji river dolphin
(12/17/2006) Chinese state media reports that scientists will continue to search for the baiji dolphin even after a 38-day search failed to produce any evidence of its existence in the Yangtze River.


Goodbye to the Baiji
(12/13/2006) After a short illness spurred by pollution, overfishing, boat traffic, and obstructions like dams, the Baiji was declared 'functionally extinct' last night. As a species, the river dolphin found only in China's Yangtze River was 20 million years. The Baiji is survived by other river dolphins, all themselves threatened, in the Ganges, Indus, Amazon, Orinoco, and La Plata rivers. No memorial service will be held.


Are old-growth forests storing more carbon than before?
(12/4/2006) Old-growth forests in China are storing more carbon than previously believed. The finding could have implications for fighting global warming through forest conservation, though some researchers caution that the results may not be representative of tropical forests as a whole.


Groundwater supplies polluted in 90% of cities in China
(12/3/2006) Groundwater water supplies are polluted or overexploited in about 9 out of every 10 Chinese cities according to official state media.


Chinese river dolphin nearly extinct says official
(12/3/2006) Xinhua, China's state news agency, reported that a 26-day search for the Baiji, or the Yangtze dolphin, found no dolphins. The Baiji is highly threatened by pollution, overfishing, and obstructions like dams.



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