China's dirty secret

We've been talking a lot here on the In Box recently about environmental policy, the pros, the cons, the economic costs.

A new study released today suggests that China is literally burying itself under the toxic waste of its mega-industrial revolution.

The study, reported in the New York Times, was conducted by China's government, and suggests that the world's most populous country will eventually have to rethink it's economic policies fundamentally.

“We believed we needed to cut our emissions in half, but today’s data means a lot more work needs to be done,” Mr. Ma Jun [director of the Institute of Public and Environmental affairs ]said.

One interesting aspect of this study is the amount of agricultural and farm pollution identified as most problematic.

The extent of agricultural waste could prove a more intractable problem than the many factories dumping effluent into China’s rivers and lakes.

“When it’s millions of farmers, it’s more difficult to bring it under control,” Mr. Ma said.

Steven Ma, of the Beijing office of Greenpeace, said that the government’s decision to calculate and release figures for agriculture would start to have an effect on the policy debate over water pollution in China. “Everybody knew there was a problem with agricultural pollution in China, but now there are numbers,” he said.