China is overtaking the United States as the world's largest source of greenhouse gases even though its economy is only one-sixth in size

Treasury's McCormick Says China's Growth Harming Environment

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- China must do more to prevent its booming economy and rising energy consumption from further damaging the environment, the U.S. Treasury's top international official said.

"China's rapid economic growth has come at a terrible cost to its air, water and soil," David McCormick, Treasury's undersecretary for international affairs, said in the text of a speech at a forum at the University of California, San Diego.

McCormick directed some of his criticism at China's Three Gorges Dam project on the upper reaches of the Yangtze, Asia's longest river. "The dam has created extensive environmental problems such as water pollution and landslides, and has come at a tremendous human cost, with the displacement and relocation of over 1 million people," he said.

McCormick's rebuke comes as China prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, in Beijing in August. He noted that 16 of the 20 most polluted cities are in China, and said 26 percent of the country's surface water is "totally unusable." The U.S. and other countries must help China find "sustainable solutions" to its problems, he added.

"China is overtaking the United States as the world's largest source of greenhouse gases even though its economy is only one-sixth in size," he said.

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China's push for hydropower dams sparking grassroots backlash

Jan. 7, 2008 -- The Chinese government's recent decision to scrap controversial plans for a huge dam at Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River represents a milestone for growing grassroots political movements in China, suggests the author of a new book on the politics behind China's epic dam-building campaign.

Mertha, an assistant professor of political science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, bases his book on extensive field research in some of the most remote parts of Southwest China. Filled with first-hand accounts of widespread opposition to dams in Pubugou and Dujiangyan in Sichuan province and the Nu River Project in Yunnan province, the book documents dramatic changes in critical policies surrounding China's insatiable quest for energy.

"As China has become increasingly market driven, decentralized and politically heterogeneous," he argues, "the control and management of water has transformed from an unquestioned economic imperative to a lightning rod of bureaucratic infighting, societal opposition and open protest."

Although bargaining has always been present in Chinese politics, Mertha shows how actors once denied a seat at the table — media, nongovernmental organizations and grassroots activists — are emerging to become serious players in the policy-making process.

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In the final days of 2007, the Chinese government made a surprise announcement abandoning plans for a controversial dam that would have submerged Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, one of China's most renowned tourist areas. While the decision represents an obvious victory for the burgeoning Chinese environmental movement, Mertha considers the impact and occasional success of such grassroots movements and policy activism to be signals of an important and much broader shift in China's domestic politics.

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Three Gorges History Drowning in Rising Reservoir

As the reservoir from China's Three Gorges Dam reaches its maximum height this year, it will inundate more than 400 square miles of land.

More than a million people are being moved along with homes, schools and hospitals. But this part of China is home to a unique culture, not all of which can be moved.

Some parts of the culture are being saved — and some are being lost.

Historic Sites at Risk

An impressive Stone Treasure Fortress dominates the shoreline of the reservoir in the county of Zhongxian. There aren't any fortifications any more. The main structure is an early 18th century, multitiered pagoda with curly eaves.

It's perched on a cliff looking out over the Yangtze River. On the front of the gateway is a water level marker that says 175.1 — the number of meters above sea level and the level to which the waters will rise when the dam is completed.

This was once the stronghold of the Deng clan, and an ancient village once sat at the feet of the fortress. The village has now been razed and its residents relocated.

One of them is Deng Shuhua, who sells drinks and souvenirs outside the site. He recounts a local legend about how the place got its name.

"The legend goes that the Goddess Nuwa was fixing a hole in the sky. She was carrying some stones in a basket, when one of them dropped out, fell on the river bank and became this mountain. That's the 'Stone Treasure,'" he says.

New Defenses for an Ancient Fortress

Nearby, workers cut and chisel stone, part of an effort to protect the fortress from the rising waters.

Engineer Qiu Guogui works close to the site. He says the fortress will be surrounded by 222 concrete and steel pillars — and a wall connecting them will keep the river from submerging the fortress.

"The fortress will become an isolated island, accessible either by boat or a connecting bridge," Qiu says.

Downriver from the fortress is a temple dedicated to a third century general of the Three Kingdoms period, Zhang Fei.

"The entire temple was moved with the aim of preserving it in its original form," says Wu Qiongying, a tour guide. "Every stone and brick you see here was removed piece by piece, numbered, moved and then used to reconstruct the temple."

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Bitter memories above the Yangtze

Bitter memories above the Yangtze

The Amazon may be larger, the Nile longer, but no river flows through the lives of as many people as the Yangtze, known in China as the Chang Jiang.

Despite the spectacular views, for many it brings back memories of bitterness and pain.

Zhang Zheng Jun now lives with his wife in one room overlooking the river, his only belongings spilling out of a suitcase.

In March he was forcibly relocated - his home demolished to make way for a bridge over the new reservoir created by China's Three Gorges Dam.

When he refused to accept the governments compensation offer he was arrested and his house torn down.

Up to four million people may lose their homes before the project is completed in 2009.

Over a million and a half have already been forcibly resettled, but many complain they have yet to see any compensation.

Allegations of corruption are also widespread, with reports emerging that tens of millions of dollars of resettlement money are being pocketed by corrupt officials.

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Chinese three gorges dam project - The Human Cost - Video

At final completion, the Three Gorges Dam is expected to displace upwards of 5 million people, 1.5 million in the first wave followed by 3.5 million more as the reservoir fills. The population displacement is huge, analogous to removing and resettling the entire population of the state of Colorado. China has four more dams of this size planned for the upper Yangtze.

China plans four more mega dams to harness the Yangtze

ANOTHER four mega dams are expected to appear on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and together they will have the capacity to produce double the amount of hydropower created by the Three Gorges facility, a senior engineer of the projects' construction body confirmed today.

The dams are expected to create a new world record with a total installed hydropower capacity of 32 million kilowatts, surpassing the 18.2-million-kilowatt Three Gorges Dam.

The dams will lie along the lower reaches of the Jinshajiang River, the biggest tributary to the Yangtze between Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.

Plans of Wudongde Hydropower Station and Baihetan Hydropower Station are now still under consideration, Zhang Shuguang, deputy general engineer of China Three Gorges Project Corporation, confirmed to Shanghai Daily this afternoon.

Water diversion has already begun for Xiluodu Hydropower Station, the country's second largest dam. Construction began on November 26 for Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station, the third biggest, Zhang added.

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More than 7,300 residents have been relocated for the 50.3-billion-yuan Xiluodu project. It is expected to bring extra fiscal revenue of 30 million yuan to Sichuan Province, Wang Huaichen, deputy governor of Sichuan, said in previous interview.

Xiangjiaba, a plant with an investment of 18 billion yuan, will have a total installed hydropower capacity of six million kilowatts and will be completed in 2015, the New Express said.

It also added that planners will probably start the construction of Wudongde and Baihetan in 2010 and that research for both will end next year.

Wudongde has a planned installed hydropower capacity of 7.4 million kilowatts while Baihetan has 12 million kilowatts.

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China's giant dam unleashes landslides - 31 killed in latest report

LAST year, Chinese officials celebrated the completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of world records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world's biggest dam, biggest power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel. Ever. Even the project's official tally of 1.13 million displaced people made the list as record No10.

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China's biggest folly. Chinese officials have admitted that the dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials want to begin a new relocation programme for four million people - a new record they don't really want.

In the latest incident, the death toll from a landslide near the dam earlier this week soared yesterday when state media revealed the collapse had crushed a bus, killing 31 people.

The bus was found three days after Tuesday's landslide. Early reports from the Xinhua news agency had put casualties at the railway tunnel construction site at one worker killed, one injured and two missing.

Officials are now sending mixed messages about the project's environmental impact.

A report in the official China Daily newspaper earlier this week quoted the project's director saying that problems along the dam's 410-mile-long reservoir were no worse than expected and that no major geological problems had been recorded in the area since water levels rose to 512ft last year.

"The impact has not gone beyond the scope predicted in a 1991 feasibility report. In some aspects, it is not as severe as predicted," Wang Xiaofeng, the director of the central government's Three Gorges Project Construction Committee, said in the state-run newspaper.

The comments marked a stark reversal from recent warnings by Mr Wang and other officials who said China faced a catastrophe if it failed to stop riverbank erosion and other environmental problems caused by the dam, the world's largest hydropower project.

Mr Wang was earlier quoted in state media telling a seminar in September that China could not afford to "lower our guard against ecological and environmental problems caused by the Three Gorges project."

Begun in 1993, the dam was seen as the fruition of a century-old dream to harness the Yangtze, the world's third largest river, for electric power and to control flooding.

Construction has gone ahead despite complaints about its $22 billion cost and massive environmental impact. The government has forced 1.3 million people to move out of areas to be flooded by the reservoir.

But Beijing has been doing damage control since accounts emerged of the September meeting of officials and experts that raised surprisingly critical questions about the dam.

Participants warned of increasing landslides and pollution, possibly requiring the relocations of millions of more people in the reservoir area - issues critics also raised during the dam's planning and construction when they were quashed by Beijing.

Seismic activity has increased as water pours into formerly dry slopes composed of rock, soil and sediment, some of it highly porous. That is causing fissures, often deep below the surface, weakening hillsides and causing soil and shale to come loose.

The warnings about a higher environmental and human toll have raised concerns that the dam, promoted as a cure-all for Yangtze flooding and an alternative to coal-fired power generation, was exacting a price beyond its $23.6 billion construction cost.

Mr Wang's office announced this week that it was taking new remedial measures to protect the environment around the dam to prevent pollution discharge and ensure drinking water quality.

"We want to build not only a first-class hydropower project, but also a good environment," he said in China Daily.

State media and local government have also sketched out new relocation schemes, saying as many as four million people may have to be moved from areas adjacent to the dam's reservoir. Among those migrants were many from the 1.3 million who previously had to move, often to remote areas where the farmland was of poor quality.

The impact of the Three Gorges Dam is obvious in many communities along the river. Residents are worried about the cracks in house walls and some have felt the ground shift.

In the mountain villages above the reservoir, farmers have heard nothing about resettlement. For many, the immediate concern is the land beneath their feet. Landslides are striking hillsides as the rising water places more pressure on the shoreline, local officials say. In Fengjie county, officials have designated more than 800 disaster-prone areas. Since 2004, landslides have forced the relocation of more than 13,000 people in the county.

Not far from the dam itself, residents in the tiny village of Miaohe felt a major tremor in April beneath their farmhouses. Officials ordered them to relocate for three months into a mountain tunnel for lack of any other night time shelter.

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Massive resettlement planned for Three Gorges region...again

Rural unemployment and environmental problems aggravated by China’s Three Gorges dam have prompted authorities to announce a second massive resettlement scheme affecting millions of people along the dam’s 600-kilometre long reservoir. Already, 1.13 million people have been resettled to make way for the Three Gorges dam, about half of them farmers.

Now the Chongqing government plans to move another 2.3 million rural people living along the Three Gorges reservoir into nearby cities.

(To try and come to grips with this population figure, imagine the entire state of Connecticut (pop. 3,504, 809) needing to be uprooted, rehoused and resettled. )

The plan, approved by Chongqing last August, aims to encourage rural people to move to the cities where they have better chances of finding employment. Officials claim this will relieve environmental pressure in the Three Gorges reservoir region, which is plagued by frequent landslides, severe soil erosion, and water pollution – exactly as critics have warned since the 1980s.

Unlike Three Gorges resettlement, where people were forced to move, the slogan this time is: “guided by government, selected by the market, and decided by the people to move voluntarily.”

“The fundamental objective is to change farmers to urban citizens and get them settled in the cities permanently by encouraging them to give up the farmland in the reservoir areas,” Miao Wei, vice director of the Chongqing Development and Reform Commission, said in a September 11 interview with the Beijing-based news magazine, 21st Century Economic Herald.

Chongqing, a large port city at the western end of the Three Gorges reservoir, had its jurisdiction extended in 1997 to encompass almost the entire Three Gorges reservoir region, an area twice the size of Holland (82,000 square kilometres). Chongqing municipality, as it is now known, has a population of 28 million, roughly half of whom live in rural areas.

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Africa's Grand Inga Hydroelectric Project to produce three times as much power as China's Three Gorges Dam, electricity to supply Copper Mines

[Monday, 12 November 2007] When the giant Inga hydro-electricity power project began in the then Zaire in 1972, the anticipation was that its capacity to produce 1,775 Mega Watts of hydro electricity would be enough to supply the inevitably growing industrial and consumer power demand in southern and central Africa for many years to come. After a protracted civil war in the country, demand for electricity has surged indeed with the emerging interest in developing the vast mineral resources in the Katanga region yet both Inga Phases I and II (with 351 MW and 1,424 MW capacities respectively) are producing at less than 30% capacity, way below the needs of regional economies whose own domestic supplies are also falling short.

However, help is on the way, through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) created by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s power utility, SNEL and the Canadian energy and resources company, MagIndustries.

The PPP project, which began in the first quarter of last year, mandates MagEnergy (a subsidiary of MagIndustries), in Phase I, to refurbish elements of the Inga II plant at a cost of US$25 million and then in Phase II, to rehabilitate four of Inga II’s eight turbines to full capacity (712 MW) at a cost of US$110 million. Phase I will be completed in the first quarter of 2008 and Phase II will commence mid-year 2008 to finish by year-end 2011.

South Africa’s IDC is an equity partner with 30% in Phase I and 15% in Phase II.

According to MagIndustries’ president, William Burton, the refurbishment and rehabilitation work should result in the Inga power plants being able to meet the anticipated 800 MW power demand from the DRC’s Copper Belt in six years.

“In addition to that, there should be enough power to supply other needs in the country as well as for export to, primarily, South Africa and other regional economies like Zambia (which shares the mineral rich copper belt). International power demand exceeds supply and the gap is growing rapidly,” said Burton.

He added that for its current work at Inga, MagIndustries receives revenues of US$200,000 a month. After the first quarter of 2008, with the completion of its Phase I work, MagIndustries will recognize revenues on the sale of 84 MW per year for six years.

MagEnergy, as DRC’s first Independent Power Producer, is also actively interested in other power projects, including Busanga, the country’s second largest hydro site with a potential to produce 250 MW.

Pre-feasibility study is underway at Busanga, which is adjacent to the Katanga Copper Belt and can be readily connected to the South African power pool grid. Another project MagEnergy has interest in is the Zongo II site (100MW potential) where a “scoping study” is underway.

MagEnergy projects at Inga are expected to lead into an ambitious plan by a group of five African countries and their international backers who have explored plans to establish the world’s biggest hydro-power generator, the Grand Inga Project at an estimated cost of US$50 billion.

According to information sourced from SADC publications and sinkswatch.org, an environmental website, the proposed 39,000 MW Grand Inga project (double the current supply for all of Africa) would be a joint project by the governments of Angola, Botswana, DRC, Namibia and South Africa through a company called Western Power Corridor (Westcor) with financial assistance from various world renowned institutions. Planning is coordinated by the World Energy Council (WEC).

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China completes river damming for world's 2nd largest hydropower plant project

XILUODU, Sichuan, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- China successfully dammed the Jinsha River on Thursday, marking a key step in the construction of the Xiluodu hydropower plant. When completed, the dam will be the second largest of its type in the country after the massive Three Gorges Project.

Wang Shukai, deputy director of the project under the China Three Gorges Project Corporation, said it took workers 30 hours to complete the damming at 15:38 p.m. at Xiluodu in the southwestern Sichuan Province. At that spot, the river is 47 meters wide and runs at a speed of seven meters per second.

"This power plant will contribute to the country's drive of developing undeveloped western regions and to the promotion of a sustainable development of society, economics and environment," he said.

With a designed installed capacity of 12.6 million kilowatts, the Xiluodu plant will be the nation's second largest hydropower plant following the Three Gorges Plant and the third largest of its type in the world.

When finished in 2015, the dam will stand 278 meters high with a reservoir containing 11.57 billion cubic meters of water.

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As The Three Gorges Dam Nears Completion, Environmental Damage Admitted by Ruling Party

China admits to big problems from its big dam

MIAOHE, China — The Three Gorges Dam, said to be the world's biggest civil-works project, spans a mile and a half across the Yangtze River. Nearly a year and a half after it was completed, the government still touts the $26 billion dam as a showcase project that limits disastrous seasonal flooding and generates vast amounts of electricity.

But authorities now admit that the dam is generating major problems. It's created a huge — and heavy — reservoir pressing against the mountains along the Yangtze, making them more prone to landslides. The deep reservoir stretches upriver about 370 miles, impeding the natural flushing action of the river and trapping pesticides, fertilizer and raw sewage.

Downriver from the dam, water flows cleaner and faster, adversely affecting aquatic species adapted to sediment in the river.

Authorities are finally letting reports of the dam's problems reach the public in an apparent bid to pre-empt criticism should disaster unfold.

"If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe," the official Xinhua news agency warned in an unusually blunt report two weeks ago during a forum on the environmental consequences of the project.

The report cited Tan Qiwei, the vice mayor of Chongqing, a sprawling city at the head of the reservoir, as saying that slopes along the Yangtze had collapsed in 91 places and a total of 22 miles of land along the river had caved in.

To make way for the reservoir, authorities relocated about 1.3 million people, moving them away from the rising river and allowing 100 or so towns to submerge slowly under floodwaters rising more than 500 feet. As new landslides loom, more relocations are taking place.

The rising Yangtze has caused other woes, including higher winds in the gorges.

"The dam has brought harm to local people's lives even though it is a great project with lots of benefits for the country," said Han Yong, a 31-year-old farmer.

China's communist leaders ordered work to begin on the Three Gorges dam in 1993, foreseeing the world's largest hydroelectric project. The showcase dam, first envisioned nearly a century ago, towers 600 feet and holds back 20 billion tons of water in the reservoir. When all 26 mammoth turbines are operational, perhaps within two years, the dam may provide 10 percent of China's electrical needs.

Experts said engineers had toiled for decades over the project and knew that the reservoir was so weighty that it might cause earth tremors.

Some landslides have sent walls of water more than 100 feet high crashing across the reservoir to the adjacent shoreline, causing even more damage, Huang Xuebin, the head of the Office to Prevent and Control Geological Disasters in the Three Gorges Reservoir, told the forum last month.

The environmental problems have proved especially nettlesome.

"The quality of the water is much worse than we expected, especially in the tributaries," said Weng Lida, the former chief of the Yangtze River Water Resources Protection Bureau, a government agency, who now works for a regional trade group.

Here is the full article.

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