AS BEIJINGERS coughed and hacked their way through another smoggy day, there were tentative signs the government was becoming aware of the broader impact of climate change and may be gearing up to do something about it.
Driving efforts to combat pollution is a growing awareness of the impact of environmental issues on political stability, and on how it affects China’s growing economic wellbeing and food provision.
China is the world’s most populous nation, its second biggest economy, is the biggest producer of CO2 gases and is home to some of the most polluted cities on the planet, the capital included. Climate change has also wrecked havoc on the rivers and lakes and glaciers that water the country, and desertification is eating into arable land.
The central government has also released a hefty tome entitled the Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change, which assesses the impact of global warming for China, and says climate change could slash harvests, devastate rivers and cause droughts and floods.
“China faces extremely grim ecological and environmental conditions under the impact of continued global warming and changes to China’s regional environment,” said the report, which was published late last year.
However, China is still very much in the initial phase of its transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial one, which means that greenhouse gases blamed for global warming are unlikely to even start falling off before 2030.
Without any action, grain production could fall from anything between five and 20 per cent by 2050, says the report.
It said climate change would cause major imbalances in water resources every year.
“Without effective measures in response, by the latter part of the 21st century, climate change could still constitute a threat to our country’s food security,” the report said.
Rising seas would also cause problems in the big cities of the coast, many of which have been the economic engines of Chinese expansion in the past three decades.
In the 30 years up to 2009, the sea level off Shanghai rose 11.5 centimetres, and would probably rise another 10 to 15 centimetres in the next 30 years.
Meanwhile, after months of prevarication, the city government has agreed to start to publish more detailed air quality data on Beijing at some stage later this month, following a public outcry over official government readings that hugely underestimated just how bad the air pollution is in the nation’s capital.
The Beijing municipal government plans to publish hourly air quality reports based on an international standard known as PM 2.5, which measures tiny particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter.
Until now, most Beijing residents have had to rely on the US embassy website for their data, on a Twitter feed. And given that Twitter is banned, this was not an option for most Beijingers.
The initial response to the US embassy feed was a request to stop publishing the data. But the level of pollution in Beijing is obvious.
During the past year, smog at times forced the city to close roads and shut the airport.
Reports in the state media about the city reaching its target on “blue-sky days” are met with guffaws on microblogs.
Even prominent figures such as property magnate Pan Shiyi have been outspoken in criticising the government’s official readings on pollution. “Frequent hazy days triggering public concern” was listed among the top 10 environmental news items for 2011 by China Environment News, a newspaper run by the environment ministry.
Meanwhile, air pollution levels in Hong Kong were the worst ever last year, a finding that may further undermine the city’s role as an Asian financial centre as business executives relocate because of health concerns.