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China Human Development Report 2002 Making Green Development A Choice United Nations Development Programme China Human Development Report 2002 Making Green Development a Choice produced by Stockholm Environment Institute in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) China Oxford University Press 2002 China Human Development Report i Oxford University Press Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Copyright © 2002 United Nations Development Programme, China 2 Liangmahe Nanlu, Beijing 100600, China www.unchina.org/undp All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by Law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address below. You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication-Data available Printed in Hong Kong Published by Oxford University Press (China) Ltd 18th Floor, Warwick House East, Taikoo Place, 979 King’s Road, Quarry Bay Hong Kong ISBN 0-19-592744-3 First published in 2002 This impression (lowest digit) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Cover photographs by Lynn Yen, Beijing, UNDP China, and Karl Hallding, SEI Report layout by Lisetta Tripodi, SEI Cover layout by Arno Rosemarin and Karl Hallding, SEI ii UNDP Foreword This third China Human Development Report (CHDR) deals with China’s challenge at the crossroads towards sustainable development. China’s development is central to global stability. Annual growth rates have been averag- ing nearly 10% the last 20 years. Also government reforms over the last 20 years have reduced poverty for a quarter of the population. China’s rapid transition towards a market-based economy and entry into the WTO are changing the global scene. And the world has never witnessed such a fast pace of urban modernization that we see today in China. The challenges of fulfilling a vision of green development in China are monumental, requiring a complex orchestration of policies and activities at a scale of operation the world has never seen. There is commitment, and there is awareness but still the right choices have to be made to achieve green development. The UNDP commissioned Stockholm Environment Institute to produce this CHDR in order to ensure that the report would raise the central questions surrounding sustainable development and the critical options at hand. The report is also well timed since it arrives while the world is preparing for the World Summit on Sustainable Develop- ment 2002 in Johannesburg. It is thus timely that the CHDR examines the general system of societal, environmental and economic factors that together make what China is today and what it can become in the future. The report is an assessment of modern China and some of the bottlenecks requiring attention in the manifestation of a greener agenda. This is not a state of the environment report but a critical assessment of progress made and challenges and choices remaining. The report presents options and attempts to ask the “right” questions. In this way it tries to stimulate a healthy debate on identifying suitable solutions. It also takes a candid look at the past to draw upon the most useful lessons for determining what could be done now for the future. The report describes the physical and geographical challenges that this country presents to its populace. These are obviously central factors in determining the limits of human development. It also examines China’s people and their history and culture as the resource and foundation to build and modernise this vast land. It describes the perils of the current state of the environment including status of land, water, air and biological resources. It examines the associated impacts of development on human health and welfare. It provides an assessment of the drivers and linkages between society and environment, and two scenarios – one based on current trends and one based on a greener future. The main message of the report is that there is a real opportunity at hand to green China’s develop- ment agenda but that critical choices must be made by China’s leaders, policy makers and interested stakeholders for this to happen. ___________________________ _______________________ Kerstin Leitner Roger Kasperson Resident Representative Executive Director United Nations Development Programme in China Stockholm Environment Institute China Human Development Report iii iv UNDP Preface and Acknowledgements This report has been developed over the past two years (2000-2002); a period during which China has undergone many significant changes. We have been trying to capture the main changes with regard to the environment and sustainable development, while at the same time providing the reader with an overall impression of where China is today, how it evolved to the present situation, and what options there are for the future. This is not a state of the environment report but a more pointed analysis of the interaction between environment, society and government and the policy challenges therein. Chapter 1 provides an overall introduction to the report including the overall contents of each chapter and the final chapter 5 summarizes the main issues. The reader is also encouraged to examine the Scenario Boxes that run through the report as a background element in revealing the two alternative paths of development, the perilous path and the green reform path. The Scenarios have been adapted for China on the basis of the East Asia Scenarios from the GEO-3 (Global Environmental Outlook) process, for the use of which we owe gratitude to the UNEP. A few words on how we have worked with various data sources are also in order. Availability and reliability of data is a key challenge for anyone who has been assigned the task of describing China. Being more of a continent than a country, and with various conditions changing dramatically across the country, any attempt to try describing China in terms of average, aggregate numbers runs the risk of missing some of the crucial information. As an example, China has on the average a little bit more than 2,200 cubic metres of freshwater available per capita per year, putting China on par with countries like Germany, the UK, Nigeria or Sri Lanka, where water is indeed a limited resource, but not scarce. What the average of 2,200 cubic metres fails to recognise is that almost 600 million people in China’s north are living in areas that belong to the most water scarce locations on earth, and that many places may suffer from both flooding and drought within the same year. The same can be said for resources such as arable land, grasslands, forests and erosion areas. Countrywide average per capita data do not reveal the hot spots nor the critical issues. We have therefore taken a critical look at the various regions within China and examined the highly skewed distribution of human settlements and natural resources. Another problem is the lack of comprehensive and reliable datasets covering the whole country. Crucial data that have been collected through Chinese government statistical systems through decades, sometimes centuries, are characterised by serious quality and systematic errors. One illustrative example is the acreage of arable land, which used to be estimated at roughly 90 million hectares, or less than 10 percent of the Chinese landmass, but which due to new and better methods, using remote sensing and geographical information systems, is now estimated at more than 130 million hectares. These types of broad-based errors in the range of 50 percent that relate to key resources may of course have considerable implications on the entire policy situation and development strategy. So, in outlining the course of China’s environmental and societal development and the prospects for future sustainability we have had to rely on both the available routine data, but also on “common sense”, based on reasoning supported by anecdotal evidence, media reports, monitoring campaigns with limited geographic or the- matic coverage, and by sound professional judgement. Our attempt has been to provide the story about the environ- mental situation and opportunities in China where the context is more important than just the individual data. This largely qualitative approach has been supported by a broad reviewing process including Chinese officials and experts, as well as international experts. This report is aimed at a wide audience, and in doing so there will always be some readers who find certain parts superfluous, too detailed or plain incomprehensible. Spanning as wide academic fields as environmental sciences, sinology, and social sciences, as well as methodologies for envisioning different future options, there is also a risk that some readers will be challenged by some of the particular topics. In order to help, we have ensured that all technical aspects of the report are written as simply as possible. When it comes to the world of acronyms and terminology, we have provided a list of abbreviations with explanations for those that have been used in the report. China Human Development Report v For those with more specific interests relating to the Human Development Index, the Annex chapter contains relevant datasets.