China's economic boom has an environmental dark side. While China's economy continues to grow at a rate of more than 8% annually, as it has for more than two decades, the country's environment and the Chinese people are paying a steep price. China now boasts five of the ten most polluted cities in the world; 70% of the water that flows through China's urban areas is unfit for drinking or fishing; and severely degraded land or desert, which now claims 1/4 of China's land, is advancing at a rate of 1300 sq. miles per year. As Nathan Nankivell points out, the environmental crisis poses a challenge for China's leaders on their own developmental terms. The environment is biting back into economic growth: regions from Qinghai to Shenzhen, for example, face significant costs to industrial production from lack of water; countrywide, these economic losses totaled $28 billion in 2003 and the challenge is only increasing. Overall costs to China's economy from environmental pollution and degradation are estimated at 8-12% of GDP annually. Environment-related public health is a second significant problem. Chinese officials have acknowledged, for example, that 300 million people drink contaminated water on a daily basis, and of these, 190 million drink water that is so contaminated that it is making them sick. Finally, the failure of the government to redress its environment-related economic and public health problems has produced widespread social discontent. Environmental protests are a serious source of localized social instability that in numerous, widely-reported cases over the past year alone, have turned violent. For the rest of the world, how China responds to its environmental crisis has enormous implications. Nankivell outlines some potential future scenarios that suggest just how serious a threat China's environmental practices might be to global security. Already, throughout Asia and beyond, China's contribution to transborder air and water pollution provokes significant concern. Russia's harsh criticism of China's handling of the recent transborder water pollution disaster that poisoned the water for the twelve million residents of Harbin and many others suggests the potential for international conflict. Globally, China is one of the world's leading contributors to climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss, and it is now in the early stages of following the United States and other rich nations in a race toward mass automobile ownership whose implications for air pollution and global warning are profound. Can China change its environmental trajectory? There are some positive signs. While quadrupling its GDP between 1980 and 2000, China's energy increased only twofold, suggesting a recognition of improved efficiency. And the Chinese state monitors pollution at 300,000 factories. Formally registered environmental non-governmental organizations now total more than 2000 in China, and environmental activists, with the help of the Chinese media and some outspoken Chinese officials, are pressing for environmental impact assessments to be openly conducted, bringing lawsuits against polluting factories, and even attempting to halt megadam construction. In some wealthier Chinese cities, such as Dalian and Shanghai, proactive leaders have increased the share of local funds devoted to environmental protection. Nankivell calls for greater assistance by the international community. In fact, international environmental NGOs, foreign governments and international governmental organizations such as the World Bank are all deeply engaged in contributing to China's environmental protection effort. Indeed, by one account, international NGOs now account for as much as three fourths of funding for environmental protection in China. It is nevertheless difficult to escape the impression that, thus far, the combined efforts amount to chasing a problem that is growing by leaps and bounds, and that efforts to reverse the juggernaut appear rather like the application of band aids over gaping wounds. In the end, the possibilities for slowing and eventually reversing environmental disasters will have to come through the concerted efforts of the international community in combination with the agency of vigorous and informed states. In China, as in the United States, Japan and elsewhere, the priorities of the state will be crucial. But they will also reflect the pressures from the citizenry under circumstances in which the gods of accelerated development and global definitions of modernity (the private automobile most importantly) exercise powerful sway. Critical gaps in China's domestic policy milieu will have to be reversed, and fundamental decisions about national priorities will have to be reconceived, if that nation is to avoid the crippling consequences of environmental pollution and contributing massively to global warming. Chief among these are corruption, low levels of investment in environmental protection, a lack of incentives to do the right thing, still nascent practice of the rule of law, a primacy on economic development, and poor transparency. The issues, however, are hardly the responsibility of China alone as the United States' rejection of the Kyoto environmental accords makes plain. Indeed, while the United States is both the largest source of global warming and the major obstacle to an environmentally responsible international policy, China has emerged as an important ally in efforts to prevent the realization of meaningful global standards to restrict greenhouse gases and address other global environmental problems. If not addressed, environmental challenges will drag China-and the rest of the world along with it-deeper into an environmental crisis and further along the path of Nankivell's dark scenarios.
