Groups fear growing China can’t be green

BEIJING | Environmental groups in China are worried that the country's efforts to stave off the global financial crisis could come at the cost of continued environmental degradation.

Groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of Nature, the World Wildlife Fund and the National Resources Defense Council say there is little transparency about China's promised $586 billion stimulus package.

“So far, according to what we see, we feel that it's a bit of a mystery about where this money will go,” said Sze Pang Cheung of Greenpeace China. “If the money goes into building more steel plants, that requires more energy and more raw materials and that's going to have a negative impact. But if the money goes into improving energy efficiency in the steel industry, that could have a positive impact.”

Although China is now the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide - which is called a key factor in climate change - the environmental budget in the stimulus package was cut by 40 percent during a recent revision and now comprises about 5 percent of the total, or $30.7 billion in spending over the next three years. Stimulus spending dedicated to transportation and power infrastructure is far larger: $219.5 billion.

Li Bo, director of Friends of Nature, issued a statement recently calling for greater transparency and for representatives of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's parliament, to “closely follow the environmental oversight” of the stimulus package.

While environmentalists say they are disappointed in the budget cuts, they are more concerned that funds that could have gone to increasing efficiency and reducing pollution might go to high-polluting and energy-intensive industry as China struggles to achieve an annual growth rate of 8 percent, a figure considered key to ensuring social stability.

In fact, 20 provinces have set target growth rates of 10 percent or more, increasing worries that development targets will trump environmental goals.

“I think the key concern is whether the stimulus package will go back to heavily polluting industry,” said Zhang Shiqiu, deputy dean of the College of Environmental Sciences at Peking University. “China has already made an effort to reduce this kind of development.”

On March 24, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told top officials at a meeting of the State Council that all levels of government needed to be vigilant about where the spending goes to increase transparency and avoid corruption, according to state television broadcaster CCTV.

At a Beijing news conference on the sidelines of the NPC last month, Wu Xiaoqing, vice minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), said the ministry had turned down or postponed 14 heavily polluting stimulus package projects worth about $15.2 billion.

“We'd rather be seen as the bad guy at the moment than make our way into history as sinners,” Mr. Wu said. “We must be very strict in applying environmental standards.”

Environmental activists question whether MEP can be strict at the same time it is swift. In just three months, MEP approved $141.9 billion in stimulus-related projects.

Activists say the process is too rapid to adequately access the projects' environmental impacts.

“The problem is that some of this is done in a short time,” said Mr. Zhang. “If some of the projects are very big, the environmental impact assessments [EIAs] will take a long time.”

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