China’s green push starts at the bottom
28/3/2006 BBC In the Liajiang Valley some 10,000 families are putting pigs manure to good use – to fuel methane stoves. Shovelling it up and putting it in a pit in their backyards. There it stews, brewing methane gas which flows along a small rubber pipe directly into the kitchen stove. For these families, there’s no need for firewood and a good deal less smoke. China’s leaders are demanding that China become a good deal greener. Economic growth at all costs will no longer do. This new-found ambition has got Western – and Chinese – companies licking their lips in anticipation. A quarter-century of breakneck development has left the environment in China on the brink of collapse. About three-quarters of the rivers in the cities have water that is undrinkable and the quality of the air is often little much better. Chinese people are beginning to protest about the dangerous waste around them. The leadership in Beijing is sitting up and taking notice. The eleventh economic plan, neatly rubber stamped by the National People’s congress this month, makes some incredibly ambitious environmental promises. China will cut energy use by a fifth over the next five years – even while the economy continues to grow at a blistering pace. Industrial pollution will fall by a tenth, and water consumption by factories down by almost a third.