Environmental impact assessments of the Three Gorges Project in China: issues and interventions

The paper takes China's authoritative Environmental Impact Statement for the Yangzi (Yangtze) Three Gorges Project (TGP) in 1992 as a benchmark against which to evaluate emerging major environmental outcomes since the initial impoundment of the Three Gorges reservoir in 2003. The paper particularly examines five crucial environmental aspects and associated causal factors. The five domains include human resettlement and the carrying capacity of local environments (especially land), water quality, reservoir sedimentation and downstream riverbed erosion, soil erosion, and seismic activity and geological hazards. Lessons from the environmental impact assessments of the TGP are: (1) hydro project planning needs to take place at a broader scale, and a strategic environmental assessment at a broader scale is necessary in advance of individual environmental impact assessments; (2) national policy and planning adjustments need to react quickly to the impact changes of large projects; (3) long-term environmental monitoring systems and joint operations with other large projects in the upstream areas of a river basin should be established, and the cross-impacts of climate change on projects and possible impacts of projects on regional or local climate considered. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.Xibao Xu, Yan Tan, Guishan Yan

Mobile TV

This article explores how mobile television is being constructed and understood, focusing on four concepts used in contemporary public debate to discuss the technology, namely 'TV in your pocket', 'TV anytime, anywhere', 'TV on the go', and 'Enhanced TV'. Drawing on an analysis of industry reports, conference proceedings, websites, academic studies, press coverage, results of trials, advertisements and expert interviews, we examine the ways in which experts involved in the production, marketing, delivery and analysis of mobile TV regard this emergent technology. It is argued that mobile TV is constructed by these experts as a novel technological and cultural experience and form, while at the same time the rhetoric of novelty is paralleled with a continuous emphasis on the new medium's relation to familiar technological worlds. The article concludes by offering an explanation for this new/old articulation of mobile TV