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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category China.
  • Where Do the Plastic Miners Go When the “Mine” Disappears?

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    China Environment Forum  //  January 16, 2020  //  By Yining Zou
    shutterstock temple of heaven picture option for header

    Usually after dinner, Mr. Ma would take off his shirt, shut the door, and begin work making plastic pellets from scrap. But tonight, he sits in his darkened yard staring at two SUV-sized plastic processing machines and a bundle of colorful scrap plastic. No lights are on, no machines grind, and no familiar theme song of CCTV-1 plays in the background. Walking through other villages in Wen’an County, more men meander around their yards filled with the same idle processing machines and mini-mountains of scrap plastic. Most have never studied English, but they are fluent in the language of plastics, sprinkling words like ABS, PP, and PVC into their conversations. They are the owners of small plastic scrap recycling workshops that were once booming—but are now silent.

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  • Great Power Resource Competition in a Changing Climate: New America’s Natural Security Index

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    Guest Contributor  //  January 13, 2020  //  By Francis Gassert & Wyatt Scott

    Late last year, Reuters reported that the U.S. Defense Department plans to fund mining and processing operations for rare earth elements—a class of minerals for which China dominates the global market, producing over 80 percent of the world’s supply. In the past, China has restricted exports of rare earths, and recently threatened to do so again. Even with a phase one trade deal hammered out between the United States and China, natural resources are likely to remain a point of geopolitical tension.

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  • China’s Risky Gamble on Coal Conversion

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    China Environment Forum  //  Choke Point  //  January 9, 2020  //  By Richard Liu, Zhou Yang & Xinzhou Qian
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    At the September 2019 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Climate Summit, the U.S. delegation, under the shadow of intended withdrawal from Paris, did not volunteer a speaker. Attention instead focused on China. As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China was poised to assert leadership on the climate crisis.  However, perhaps lacking the sibling rivalry pressure that brought the U.S. and China together in 2014 on a joint climate agreement, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi offered no new commitments: no carbon tax, no increased investment in renewables, and no announcement to set a more ambitious coal consumption cap.

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  • What China’s Ban on Plastic Scrap Means for Global Recycling: Q&A with Kate O’Neill, Author of “Waste”

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    China Environment Forum  //  November 27, 2019  //  By Amanda Mei
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    Once a designated “recycling bin” for the world’s post-consumer scrap, China said no more when it instituted a ban on scrap imports in 2018. Countries that previously sent bulks of waste to China, such as plastic, paper, and electronics, are grappling for solutions in the face of China’s “Operation National Sword.” For example, U.S. municipalities that shipped 4,000 shipping containers per day in 2016 to China are now investing in incinerators or cutting recycling programs altogether. 

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  • China Puts Soil Pollution Under the Spotlight

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    China Environment Forum  //  On the Beat  //  September 11, 2019  //  By Shawn Archbold
    Hefei - 019

    “That ain’t no mountain,” said Jennifer L. Turner, the Director of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, in response to a picture of a pile of phosphogypsum waste just outside a farming village. She moderated a recent event on the development of environmental law and enforcement in China cohosted by the Environmental Law Institute and The Wilson Center. Since 2013, when the picture was taken, the mountain has grown, she said. She put the image up because many people hear about soil pollution, or illegal dumping, and picture something small. “You don’t picture a mountain towering over a village,” Turner said.

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  • Nothing Marvelous About Plastic Waste: China’s Pollution Endgame

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    China Environment Forum  //  August 22, 2019  //  By Jiaqiao Xiang
    rendu

    Our world is drowning in plastic pollution with nearly 8 million tons of single-use plastic and some 700,000 tons of abandoned fishing gear leaking into marine ecosystems each year. Plastic waste endangers marine species. For example, animals become entangled in abandoned nets. Marine birds, fish, whales and sharks are sickened or die when they accidentally ingest plastic. According to a 2017 study, around 90 percent of single-use plastic that pollutes our oceans comes from 10 rivers, 6 of which are in China. No Avenger superheroes can make this problem go away; rather the world needs heroic efforts by consumers, businesses, and governments to curb these plastic leaks. Encouragingly, China’s war on pollution has catalyzed new bottom-up activism and top-down policies that are starting to spur action to reduce plastic leakage.

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  • Weathering the Storm: Wastewater Resiliency in the US and China

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    China Environment Forum  //  June 6, 2019  //  By Danielle Neighbour & Gillian Zwicker
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    This article by Danielle Neighbour and Gillian Zwicker originally appeared on China US Focus.

    In 2018, floods resulted in over 20 casualties and billions of yuan in damage in China, with the government issuing 835 flood warnings nationwide. As global temperatures rise, the combination of extreme weather events and sea level rise threaten the basic infrastructure and water security of low-elevation Chinese cities. Coastal residents account for 43% of China’s population – approximately 170 million citizens live less than ten meters above sea level. In fact, seven of China’s ten largest cities are on the coast, creating high stakes for the government to address impending threats of flooding and sea level rise. Shanghai, China’s largest city, is on the frontlines of climate change as one of the world’s most flood-vulnerable major cities. Shanghai’s government was eager to invest in the sponge city initiative and expand greenspace, rooftop gardens and porous pavements to control stormwater floods. However, officials have been hesitant to invest in climate adaptation measures that don’t create a big splash, like the unglamorous networks of sewage and wastewater infrastructure.

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  • Not Too Big—Not Too Small—Just Right: Sand Bioreactor Wastewater Treatment in Chinese Villages

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    China Environment Forum  //  May 9, 2019  //  By Karen Mancl
    Screen Shot 2019-05-08 at 10.27.10 AM

    One year after the Sichuan earthquake, while visiting villages near Wenchuan, I asked local officials planning reconstruction about their plans for wastewater treatment. As an agricultural engineering professor, I was not surprised to learn that they had no plans. It was not that a wastewater treatment system was too expensive, they worried that it would be too big.

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