Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
THE SATURDAY ESSAY
Updated July 27, 2013, 2:39 a.m. ET
China's Bad Earth
...
By JOSH CHIN
and BRIAN SPEGELE
The Wall Street Journal
...
Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China's arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals. A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the "red line" of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country's 1.35 billion people.
Rural China's toxic turn is largely a consequence of two trends, say environmental researchers: the expansion of polluting industries into remote areas a safe distance from population centers, and heavy use of chemical fertilizers to meet the country's mounting food needs. Both changes have been driven by the rapid pace of urbanization in a country that in 2012, for the first time in its long history, had more people living in cities than outside of them.
...
"Pollution can be displaced only to an extent. You can't put walls around it," says Judith Shapiro, the U.S.-based author of the recent book "China's Environmental Challenges." She is one of a number of researchers and environmental activists?including many in China?who warn that pollution poses an existential threat to the current regime. It is, she says, "perhaps the single most significant determinant of whether the Communist Party will maintain its legitimacy in coming years."
...The ensuing problems of rural pollution are exacerbated by the fact that many small-town governments have less capacity to properly regulate complex industrial activities than their counterparts in big cities, experts say.
The consequences of this shift catapulted to national attention in February, after China's Ministry of Environmental Protection refused to release the results of a multiyear nationwide soil-pollution survey, calling the data a "state secret." The decision?brought to a head when an activist lawyer pressed the ministry to reveal the numbers?sparked an outcry online and in the traditional media.
...
The uproar over the soil survey was compounded by a second controversy the next month, when authorities in Guangzhou, the capital of southern China's Guangdong province, revealed that eight out of 18 samples in a survey of local rice supplies had been found to contain excessive levels of cadmium, a heavy metal that can wreak havoc on the kidneys and cause severe bone pain.
...
Removing heavy metals from farmland is a complicated process that can take years?time lost for farming. That is a chilling prospect for a government tasked with supporting 20% of the world's population on less than 10% of the world's arable land. Any major reduction in food security would hurt the Communist Party, which has staked its reputation in part on its ability to keep the country's granaries full with minimal imports.
...
Full text:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829104578624010648228142.html
Updated July 27, 2013, 2:39 a.m. ET
China's Bad Earth
...
By JOSH CHIN
and BRIAN SPEGELE
The Wall Street Journal
...
Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China's arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals. A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the "red line" of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country's 1.35 billion people.
Rural China's toxic turn is largely a consequence of two trends, say environmental researchers: the expansion of polluting industries into remote areas a safe distance from population centers, and heavy use of chemical fertilizers to meet the country's mounting food needs. Both changes have been driven by the rapid pace of urbanization in a country that in 2012, for the first time in its long history, had more people living in cities than outside of them.
...
"Pollution can be displaced only to an extent. You can't put walls around it," says Judith Shapiro, the U.S.-based author of the recent book "China's Environmental Challenges." She is one of a number of researchers and environmental activists?including many in China?who warn that pollution poses an existential threat to the current regime. It is, she says, "perhaps the single most significant determinant of whether the Communist Party will maintain its legitimacy in coming years."
...The ensuing problems of rural pollution are exacerbated by the fact that many small-town governments have less capacity to properly regulate complex industrial activities than their counterparts in big cities, experts say.
The consequences of this shift catapulted to national attention in February, after China's Ministry of Environmental Protection refused to release the results of a multiyear nationwide soil-pollution survey, calling the data a "state secret." The decision?brought to a head when an activist lawyer pressed the ministry to reveal the numbers?sparked an outcry online and in the traditional media.
...
The uproar over the soil survey was compounded by a second controversy the next month, when authorities in Guangzhou, the capital of southern China's Guangdong province, revealed that eight out of 18 samples in a survey of local rice supplies had been found to contain excessive levels of cadmium, a heavy metal that can wreak havoc on the kidneys and cause severe bone pain.
...
Removing heavy metals from farmland is a complicated process that can take years?time lost for farming. That is a chilling prospect for a government tasked with supporting 20% of the world's population on less than 10% of the world's arable land. Any major reduction in food security would hurt the Communist Party, which has staked its reputation in part on its ability to keep the country's granaries full with minimal imports.
...
Full text:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829104578624010648228142.html