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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category China.
  • Slow Down? Environmental Regulators Tap the Brakes on China’s High-Speed Rail

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  December 15, 2022  //  By Xiao Ma
    https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/train-header-for-Xiao-Ma.jpg

    China’s high-speed railway (HSR) is the most recent poster child for the country’s rapid development, with more HSR tracks than the rest of the world combined. Since 2004, the Chinese government has invested more than 10 trillion RMB to build a 40,000-kilometer (km) network of trains that zip between stations at speeds reaching 350 km/hr (or 220 miles per hour). Not to be outdone, by 2035 the government aims to expand this train network by 75 percent to help the country reach its transport connectivity and low-carbon transportation goals. 

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  • Peafowls Halt Dam: A One-off or One Step Forward for China’s Environmental Public Interest Law?

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    China Environment Forum  //  November 17, 2022  //  By Dezhi Cao
    Fantastic,Indo-chinese,Green,Peafowl,Male,In,Display,,Mating,Season.,Colorful

    The slogan “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” seemed omnipresent in China in 2015, highlighting a crucial part of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization. Yet this powerful formulation proved vague in execution, giving local policymakers new headaches on how to strike the balance between development and conservation in making new laws. China’s judiciary faced an even stickier problem. How do you try such cases in the absence of concrete legal text and sufficient legal precedents? 

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  • Deadlock in the Negotiation Rooms to Protect Global Oceans

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    China Environment Forum  //  November 10, 2022  //  By Erica Yunyi Huang

    Greenpeace together with the High Seas Alliance gather for a photo op outside the United Nations in New York to remind delegates that time is running out and demand they  agree a strong global ocean treaty.   Governments are meeting at the United Nations in New York this week to negotiate a new Global Ocean Treaty, which will determine the fate of the oceans.

    For decades, western multinational companies have been profiting by exploiting plant, animal, or microbial genetic resources obtained from less developed countries. Take the neem tree, for example. Since the 1990s, international companies have registered more than 70 patents on products derived from India’s “tree of life.” Yet these patents have prohibited local people from using these trees (as they had for centuries) to make cosmetics, fertilizers, and medicines.

    International companies have now turned their eyes to the high seas in a new hunt for genetic resources. Concerned they will be left out of the potentially profitable patents once again, developing nations are demanding equitable use and benefit sharing of genetic resources in ongoing global ocean treaty negotiations.

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  • High Stakes: China’s Leadership in Global Biodiversity Governance

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    China Environment Forum  //  Guest Contributor  //  November 3, 2022  //  By Jesse Rodenbiker
    China's,Unique,Animal,Yunnan,Rhinopithecus,Bieti

    As countries prepare to gather for the Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in December 2022, the stakes for global biodiversity couldn’t be higher. Over the last half century, global wildlife population sizes plummeted by 60 percent. A 2019 UN report, one among many, warned that the current global response to this accelerating loss of species is insufficient and that “transformative changes are needed to restore and protect nature.”

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  • Blue Jeans Contaminating Blue Oceans: The Expanding Microfiber Footprint of Our Clothes

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    China Environment Forum  //  December 2, 2021  //  By Sam Athey

    AmundsenDeck

    The Arctic is believed to be a pristine environment, far removed from littered city streets and toxic industrial emissions. I study human pollution and I found it hard to believe that my fellow researchers and I would find so much litter out here. It was even harder to believe that what we uncovered closely resembled the contents of my own closet, over 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) away in Toronto.

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  • Security Implications of Asia Pacific States’ Restrictions on Internal Migration

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    Covid-19  //  Guest Contributor  //  November 22, 2021  //  By Dung Bui & Isabelle Côté
    Mumbai/india,-,May,11,,2020:,Migrant,Workers,Walk,On,The

    As the COVID-19 pandemic reached all corners of the world, countries rapidly introduced a series of containment policies to stop its spread, including school and workplace closures, restrictions on gathering size, and limits to population movement. In contrast to complete or partial border closures for foreign nationals, restrictions on population movements within one’s country have received much less attention, despite the fact that most countries introduced restrictions on internal migration during the pandemic in the form of bans on inter- or intra-provincial travel, or partial or complete lockdowns. With over 300 million internal migrants in India and 261 million in China (out of an estimated 760 million internal migrants worldwide), these barriers to mobility are particularly acute in Asia. But are they effective?

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  • Today’s Top Global Scenarios Share Similarities and Noteworthy Differences, Including Beijing’s Role

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    Guest Contributor  //  November 9, 2021  //  By Steven Gale, Ana Fernandes, Krystel Montpetit & Alanna Markle
    Cctv,Surveillance,Cameras,In,Tiananmen,Square

    This past March, the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) offered five scenarios for global development in 2040. Two months later, the OECD released three scenarios for the future of global cooperation in 2035. Curious development professionals and others who like to peer into the future are no doubt asking: How does each organization see the future? Are the scenarios similar, different, closely aligned or wildly divergent? 

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  • Hitting the Brakes on Plastics in China’s Food Delivery Industry: Q&A with Zheng Xue and Sherry Lu of Plastic Free China

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    China Environment Forum  //  Q&A  //  November 4, 2021  //  By Solange Reppas, Mingwei Zhu, Tongxin Zhu & McKenna Potter
    Shanghai,,China,-,Apr,2,,2020:,Deliveryman,From,Food,Delivery

    In every Chinese city, there is an army of motorcycles and mopeds weaving through the traffic jams, and sometimes even venturing on sidewalks, to deliver millions of food and e-commerce orders each day. Meituan, one of China’s most popular food delivery apps, delivers 30 million orders a day, serving up 100 million plastic containers. According to Greenpeace, e-commerce and express delivery in China generated 9.4 million tons of packaging waste in 2018 and will likely triple to 41.3 million tons by 2025.

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