In China’s war on bad air, government decision to release data gives fresh hope
Aly Song/Reuters -
A man wears a mask while walking on a bridge during a hazy day
in Shanghai. Starting this year, the government has required 15,000
factories to publicly report details on their air emissions and water
discharges in real time.
“Way beyond our expectations, the government actually said yes,” said Ma Jun, head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. “I am quite amazed.”
Graphic
Comparing Chinese and U.S. air pollution
Since Jan. 1, the central government has required 15,000
factories — including influential state-run enterprises — to publicly
report details on their air emissions and water discharges in real time,
an unprecedented degree of disclosure that is shedding light on the who, what, when and where of China’s devastating environmental problems.
The
reporting requirement is part of a striking turnaround by China’s
government, which is also publishing data on the sootiest cities and
trying to limit the use of coal. The country’s appalling air is blamed
for more than a million premature deaths
a year, for producing acid rain that damages the nation’s agriculture,
for driving away tourists and even for encouraging the brightest
students to study abroad. Perhaps just as important, Beijing’s bad air
has been making its Communist leaders lose face.
Cleaning up
China’s bad air will take years, even in the best of circumstances. The
economy is dependent on coal, and there are many powerful interests
involved. But activists say the new steps could at least represent the
beginning of change.
Linda Greer of the Natural Resources Defense
Council in Washington says the reporting requirement for factories is
the “biggest thing” China has done to address its pollution problems,
and the most likely to produce results.
“It brings them from the back of the pack globally, in terms of
public information disclosure, to the front of the pack,” Greer added by
telephone. “Inevitably it will strengthen the hand of regulators when
they have bad air pollution days, to look at real-time data.”
Roots of the disclosure
The seeds of the new transparency were sown by the U.S. Embassy
when it began monitoring and publishing data on the fine particles in
Beijing’s air that cause the most harm to human health — those that
measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Today, the air-quality
readings by the U.S. Embassy and consulates around the country are a
major topic on China’s microblogs and are widely watched through a
smartphone app.
The Chinese government initially pushed back
against such disclosure, requesting in 2009 that the United States stop
making public the data.
But in 2012, Chinese authorities ordered
cities to publish their own data on PM2.5 pollution levels; today, 179
cities issue real-time figures, while the Ministry of Environmental
Protection has begun ranking the worst offenders. Those rankings have
been dynamite.
Everyone knew that heavy industry around Beijing
was responsible for much of the capital’s bad air, but few people fully
appreciated the scale of the problem. The ministry’s rankings showed
that seven of the 10
most polluted cities in China in 2013 were in Hebei province, which
surrounds the capital and is the center of the nation’s steel industry,
as well as being a major glass, coke and cement producer.
The data
made one conclusion inescapable: Beijing’s pollution would never be
tackled unless Hebei’s heavy industry was either cleaned up or shut
down.
The data disclosure was part of a new resolve in China’s
government to confront its environmental problems, which have
increasingly been the subject of protests.
In September, the
Chinese government unveiled a $280 billion plan to improve air quality,
including limiting coal use and banning high-polluting vehicles. Under
the plan, the Beijing-Tianjan-Hebei area is required to cut
concentrations of PM2.5 fine particles by 25 percent by 2017.
Of
course, China has set and missed environmental targets before. And a
real cleanup would involve significant social and economic costs,
especially for Hebei. In 2012, the province produced more crude steel
than the entire European Union and twice as much as the United States,
according to the economics research firm Dragonomics. Its steel plants
are not only massive polluters, but also massive tax and employment
generators. No one in government wants a sea of unemployed factory
workers at Beijing’s doorstep.
Nevertheless, as part of a plan to
cut overcapacity in heavy industry and limit pollution, China declared
in October that it would reduce steel production by 10 percent, or
80 million tons, by 2017, with the bulk of the adjustment forced on
Hebei.
At provincial party congress meetings in January, cleaning
up the nation’s air seemed to garner as much attention as preserving its
economic growth. Beijing’s mayor promised to cut coal use as part of an
“all-out effort” to curb air pollution, while Hebei’s governor
threatened to sack party secretaries and industry managers if production
of steel, glass and cement was even one ton above target.
Public pressure
But it is the focus on individual factories that really gives
environmentalists such as Ma reason for optimism. Although several
provinces have yet to comply with the government’s edict to publish
data, figures from Hebei are available and show factories brazenly
flaunting limits on emissions.
Ma is working with experts to
design a phone app that could vividly expose the offenders, with
factories meeting emissions targets showing up as blue and those
breaking the law coded red.
“What we aim to do, through public pressure, is help the environment protection bureau to enforce the law,” he said.
In the United States, the Toxics Release Inventory,
created in 1986, was one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s most
successful programs, Greer said. China’s real-time disclosure program is
bigger than anything the EPA has done, she said.
On
a recent day in Hebei, a thick carpet of gray smog blanketed the
province and the smell of sulphur hung in the air. Near one factory
outside the city of Tangshan, a worker on a bicycle angrily confronted
journalists trying to photograph smoke and steam billowing into the air.
“Recently
journalists have been complaining about pollution, and all the factory
owners have come under pressure,” he said. “We are very afraid they will
lay us off. Each worker has a family to raise. We have no land, or
other industry. Everything we have depends on steel factories.”
But
in the village of Wushizhuang, near the Zhengda steel works, locals
were as angry as anyone about the pollution that was harming their lungs
and ruining their crops — even though many had relatives employed in
the surrounding factories.
One man said the apples and pears in
his orchard grew so black with grime that they could never be sold,
while another wiped thick black dust off a car that he said had been
washed the day before.
Transparency obviously still has its limits
in China — the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the provincial
government in Hebei declined requests for an interview. But the new
information may drive action.
Greer said that officials could
focus on forcing factories that were egregiously violating pollution
limits to use control devices.
“Making them run their pollution
control devices is a lot easier than closing them down,” she said.
“First, I would see what happens if they all ran those devices. We might
see a meaningful reduction.”
Rongkun Zhao contributed to this report.