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

Burden-shifting of water quantity and quality stress from mega-city Shanghai

Much attention has been paid to burden-shifting of CO2 emissions from developed regions to developing regions through trade. However, less discussed is that trade also acts as a mechanism enabling wealthy consumers to shift water quantity and quality stress to their trading partners. In this study we investigate how Shanghai, the largest mega-city in China, draws water resources from all over China and outsources its pollution through virtual quantity and quality water flows associated with trade. The results show that Shanghai’s consumption of goods and services in 2007 led to 11.6 billion m3 of freshwater consumption, 796 thousand tons of COD, and 16.2 thousand tons of NH3-N in discharged wastewater. Of this, 79% of freshwater consumption, 82.9% of COD and 82.5% of NH3-N occurred in other Chinese Provinces which provide goods and services to Shanghai. Thirteen Provinces with severe and extreme water quantity stress accounted for 60% of net virtual water import to Shanghai, while 19 Provinces experiencing water quality stress endured 79% of net COD outsourcing and 75.5% of net NH3-N outsourcing from Shanghai. In accordance with the three ‘redlines’ recently put forward by the Chinese central government to control water pollution and cap total water use in all provinces, we suggest that Shanghai should share its responsibility for reducing water quantity and quality stress in its trading partners through taking measures at provincial, industrial and consumer levels. In the meantime, Shanghai needs to enhance demand side management by promoting low water intensity consumption

Modeling the Total Allowable Area for Coastal Reclamation : a case study of Xiamen, China

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ocean & Coastal Management 76 (2013):38-44, doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2013.02.015.This paper presents an analytical framework to estimate the Total Allowable Area for Coastal Reclamation (TAACR) to provide scientific support for the implementation of a coastal reclamation restriction mechanism. The logic of the framework is to maximize the net benefits of coastal reclamation subject to a set of constraints. Various benefits and costs, including the ecological and environmental costs of coastal reclamation, are systematically quantified in the framework. Model simulations are developed using data from Tongan Bay of Xiamen. The results suggest that the TAACR in Tongan Bay is 5.67 km2, and the area of the Bay should be maintained at least at 87.52 km2.The study was funded by the National Oceanic Public Welfare Projects (No. 201105006) and the Fujian Natural Science Foundation (No. 2010J01360