Softly, Greenpeace Delivers its Message in China
8/27/99
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Softly, Greenpeace Delivers its Message in China
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 27, 1999
China's breakneck economic growth is threatening a national and
global ecological disaster, Greenpeace said today in its first ever
report on the country.
Greenpeace China, in a landmark news conference in Beijing, said
China faced "environmental meltdown" if it waited to get rich before
tackling its numerous grave environmental ills.
Most of the problems set out in the 32-page Greenpeace report, which
drew heavily on Chinese government statistics and reports from
state-controlled media, are well documented.
But if the message was not new - last year Chinese media reported
with unprecedented candor on the role of deforestation in deadly
summer floods - the messenger was novel in a country that takes a dim
view of Greenpeace-style, in-your-face activism.
Executive director of the Hong Kong-based group Ho Wai Chi issued a
report cataloging the environmental price China has paid for rapid
economic growth in the last two decades - recurring and worsening
floods, acid rain and foul urban water and air.
"China is paying a very huge price in its development and the
environment is being sacrificed," he said.
The costly environmental damage threatened not only China's 1.23
billion people but the planet as well, the group said in a statement.
But Ho said Greenpeace China was "testing the waters" on the mainland
and would eschew the dramatic and confrontational protests it has
used to press its point in other countries.
"In different countries we have different styles of actions," he
said in response to questions on whether Greenpeace activists in
China would be chaining themselves to trees or surrounding toxic
waste boats in protest.
In China, he said: "The idea of an independent report from an NGO
(non-governmental organisation) is not very usual."
Greenpeace's first action in China - a protest against nuclear
testing in August 1995 - was promptly snuffed out by police and
jeered by Chinese onlookers.
Seconds after five Greenpeace executives unfurled a huge banner in
central Beijing's Tiananmen Square that said "Stop all nuclear
testing - Greenpeace," police seized it and hauled them away as
onlookers shouted "arrest them, arrest them."
Ho said two-year-old Greenpeace China had a "working relationship"
with the Beijing government and would share its expertise with the
State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), a cabinet-level
body whose profile is rising as China has come to recognize the
extent of its ecological degradation.
Ho said the Chinese government had recognized the seriousness of its
pollution problems.
"We acknowledge they have made a lot of effort, but we want to speed
up the process," he said.
China, which uses seven times more energy to produce one dollar of
gross domestic product (GDP) than developed countries, must promote
cleaner and more efficient energy use and not wait until it gets rich
to clean up its skies and waters, Ho said.
"If we have to pollute first and clean up later, that means we are
paying twice."
Direct economic losses from pollution averaged three to five percent
of GDP in the 1990s, Greenpeace said, quoting SEPA data.