I started the paper highlighted this week thinking, hmm, more panda-hugging belly-aching from do-gooders who don’t understand the necessity of the trade off between development and, shall we call it politely, environmental impact?
I finished though fully persuaded of the correctness of the authors final summary; ‘Without a fundamental mentality shift among top leaders, the main body of policy-makers and the general public to recognize the urgency of climate change and ecological degradation [In China], most issue specific and microscopic amendments and policy changes will bring in incremental changes but not a much needed reversal of the current macro-level trends.‘
The paper isn’t a long read but it’s measured and informed tone make it a powerful one; Fengshi Wu of the Nanyang Technological University and Richard L. Edmonds, an independent contributor take us on a historical tour of China’s relationship with it’s environment highlighting some of the tremendous damage to date. Just one example, according to the WWF half of China’s terrestrial vertebrates have ‘disappeared’ in the last 40-years; half?!
One of many well made points in the paper is that as China’s global footprint grows a low level of awareness of environmental issues may result in China exporting bad habits. Perhaps by moving dirty businesses out to less developed countries or its citizens thinking that it’s all right to collect endangered-animal parts in Africa even if it’s now frowned on at home [Which it isn’t in many parts of the country even today. Ed.].
The authors acknowledge the government is aware of issues but they point out more needs to be done to raise the intensity of debate so that solutions can be more energetically pursued.
The paper persuaded me we all, not just China Inc., bear a collective responsibility for awareness of our impact on the environment and must urge our leaders to move these issues up policy agendas.
Mr. Trump’s recent decision, to appoint a climate change skeptic as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S., reminds this issue is not just one for China’s citizenry to be more engaged with. The developed West still has much to do.
Read the paper in full via this link China’s Three-Fold Environmental Degradation.
Happy Sunday.