China Environmental Law

I just stumbled upon a China Daily opinion piece, “No Green Signal,” from June 16 that deals with the game that is played by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) and developers of hydroelectric projects.  In this game MEP and the environment always lose.

Often times, work on projects suspended for environmental reasons are allowed to resume because a lot of money has already been invested; and aborting the project by stopping construction would mean waste of huge capital.

In the circumstances, environmental watchdogs become hostage to the project promoters: The authority is forced to let the firms do whatever they can to reduce the damaging impact of their projects on the environment.

As far as hydropower projects are concerned, none of them has ever been stopped because of environmental concerns. It seems that firms involved in such projects take it for granted that hydropower is a clean energy; and, therefore, so is their construction of dams to harness river water for power generation.

However, that is far from being the case. Building dams along a river has proved to have a huge impact on the ecological system of the river and its surrounding environment. Such impact can be disastrous.

It concludes that it is hypocritical to say the “hydropower is a clean energy without taking steps to counteract the negative impact of dams.”

I doubt that we will see any changes as a result of this article, but it is encouraging to know that there are those who are willing to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.