3.8 million people. 100 metric tonnes of benzene. Numbers from China are awfully hard to fathom. The latest envirnonmental catastrophe in China indicates how fragile the country has become as it tries to raise the living standards for its population of 1.1 billiion. It is no secret that China's development has had extremely deleterious effects on its environment. According to the World Bank, China has 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities (see story in the Economist Aug. 2004).
As the people of Haerbin enter their third day without main water supplies, Canadians must understand that we have a stake in China's environmental neglect. Two threats should be considered. First, as China increasingly looks to ween itself from coal energy, which now accounts nearly 80 percent of all electricity in the country, it will have to rely more and more on nuclear power. Although I believe this is a positive and necessary development - as coal power is notably more harmful to air quality and is one of the largest creators of greenhouse gase emissions - without proper regulation, expertise and capacity, nuclear energy can be incomparably more dangerous (see Chernobyl). What is the threat to Canadians you ask? Aeolian processes (wind currents) that blow across the Pacific ocean have the potential to bring nuclear fallout around the northern Pacific Rim. These winds are already known to deposit red sands from northeast China across North America and threaten to become stronger and more unpredictable with continuing deforestation and desertification in China. Second, a catastrophe on the scale of Harbin, or greater, threatens to create countless environmentally displaced persons. China's current capacity to deal with such environmental crises is limited. Without access to water (or clean air for that matter), helpless Chinese may be forced offshore, not unlike the boats of migrant Chinese that showed up off BCs westcoast in 1999.
The point is that Canada must continue to engage itself with Chinese authorities over the country's environmental management. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) presently is active in this regard, but is it enough given the security threat that China's environmental degradation poses to Canada? CIDA's role in China will be diminishing following the International Policy Statement's exclusion of China from the list of 25 countries that will be the focus of Canadian aid. Nevertheless, CIDA intends to continue its strategy of promoting human rights, democratic development, good governance and environmental sustainability in China according to the agency's program framework. All of this is important, but with a shrinking budget, it will not all be possible. We must ensure that by re-focusing Canadian aid we do not neglect China's environmental fragility to the detriment of Canadian health and security. |
