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

Impacts, risks, and governance of climate engineering

Climate engineering is a potential alternative method to curb global warming, and this discipline has garnered considerable attention from the international scientific community including the Chinese scientists. This manuscript provides an overview of several aspects of climate engineering, including its definition, its potential impacts and risk, and its governance status. The overall conclusion is that China is not yet ready to implement climate engineering. However, it is important for China to continue conducting research on climate engineering, particularly with respect to its feasible application within China, its potential social, economic, and environmental impacts, and possible international governance structures and governing principles, with regard to both experimentation and implementation