Environment China

Over 600 million Chinese people live in water-stressed regions. And perhaps nowhere are China's water challenges more acute than in the dusty farm-town regions of Xinjiang, along China's old Silk Road. This episode follows a 2000-year journey to hear the water conservation story of one town, Turpan, from an ancient underground canal system ("karez"), to a paradoxical modern irrigation effort that only exacerbated water table depletion, to a complete rethink of how communities can conserve their water.

We sit down with Jiang Liping, a Senior Irrigation Engineer at the World Bank who recently completed a six-year water conservation project in Turpan. The episode explores how satellite data, a switch from growing wheat to grapes, and a revamp of water conservation accounting were able to help restore water back to Turpan's rivers, lakes, and ecosystems.

Solar panels and wind turbines are probably the first things that come to mind when you think of solutions to climate change. A less prominent but equally critical solution is adopting a plant-based diet. Studies show that the meat industry contributes 15% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Our guest today, Peggy Liu, is the founder of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE), a Shanghai-based environmental non-profit. She also serves on the board of Project Drawdown, a global research project that ranks the top solutions to climate change. Through her work on the project, she realized that what we put on our plate is key to solving climate change – adopting plant-based diets ranks as Drawdown’s #4 solution and eight of the top 20 solutions are food-related. As we previously discussed on our Green [Soy] Bean episode, beef consumption in China is rising. Peggy set out to address this source of emissions by launching Food Heroes, a JUCCCE program that teaches kids and their families how to eat a diet that is healthy for the body and planet. Food Heroes employs games and characters to make eating this diet fun. A broader lesson from Peggy’s work: sometimes the best solutions to climate change are not packaged as such climate solutions per se. Peggy has found that health benefits are strong motivators for families to adopt a meat-free diet in China. If emissions drop because families want to eat healthier, that’s a win-win according to Food Heroes. For more about Food Heroes, JUCCCE, and Peggy Liu, you can explore their website here: https://www.juccce.org/about

在中国，野生动物保护和生物多样性保护越来越引起人们的重视。然而在开展动物保护的同时，我们更需要做的是保护动物的栖息地，只有保护动物赖以生存的生态环境系统不被破坏，野生动物才能得以持续繁衍和生存。这意味着野生动物保护和生物多样性保护的工作需要各个环节的参与，包括专家学者、当地政府、志愿者团体以及当地社区，甚至还有远在城市的我们。今天做客环境中国播客的嘉宾是中国科学院动物研究所的解焱副研究员。她是中国生物多样性保护领域的知名专家，于2013年提出保护地友好的概念，并创立保护地友好体系，致力于探索一种将自然保护地、当地社区、各类组织机构和公众紧密联系起来的自然保护和经济发展相结合的模式，希望能在全国推广对保护地友好的生活、生产方式，有效保护自然资源和生物多样性，并在保证生态效益的前提下，使得经济、社会效益最大化。听众朋友可以关注www.baohudi.org，或者微信公众号baohudi了解更多相关信息。

Our guest for this episode is Xie Yan, associate research professor in the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is a leading expert on biodiversity in China and has initiated the development of Protected Area Friendly System. Prof. Xie believes that the Protected Area Friendly System provides an effective way to preserve natural resources and biodiversity by increasing income of local communities and mitigating conflicts between nature conservation and economic development.

Doctors abide by a millennia-old Hippocratic oath to “do no harm.” This oath usually refers to patient care, but today’s guest thinks the motto should extend to the environmental standards of the healthcare industry as well. Zhao Ang is the co-founder of Rock Energy and Environment Institute (REEI), a Chinese think tank that researches environment and climate issues. In the episode, he walks us through the impacts of healthcare on the environment from disposing the mercury thermometers Chinese hospitals still use to the supply chain of pharmaceuticals. As for climate impacts, the organization estimates that healthcare contributes 3-5% of China’s emissions and rising as the industry booms. REEI works with the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals alliance to introduce best practices in resiliency, low-carbon policies, and eco-friendly products to China, including facilitating a partnership with three Chinese hospitals. For more information on best practices, see the World Bank report “Climate-smart Healthcare” (English), which REEI translated into Chinese and recently launched in China.

Have you ever crossed frozen rivers to climb 4,000-meter ridges in search of snow leopards? This is a normal day "in the office" for Dr Justine Shanti Alexander. As a Regional Ecologist for the Snow Leopard Trust, Justine supports snow leopard research and conservation efforts in China and Mongolia to further safeguard the species. The cats live in the border regions of Central Asia, spanning 12 countries; the home range of males has been estimated to cover up to 200 km squared - that is half the size of Barbados. Due to the sheer expanse of their range in high remote mountain areas, it is difficult to quantify the population size, but it is guestimated that less than 10,000 individuals remain. Justine tells us how she tracked snow leopards during her PhD and now works with Shanshui (featured in our episode "Nature Conservation: There's an app for that"), training herders working in snow leopard habitats to help protect them. Our guest discusses how saving snow leopards can have trickle down effects, protecting their prey, grasslands, and the local people who coexist with them. China holds 60% of the global snow leopard habitat and therefore plays a key role in its conservation. For more information on Justine's work with the Snow Leopard Trust, visit: www.snowleopard.org

Since Environment China launched in early 2017, there has already been significant change in China’s energy, environment, and climate landscape. In this episode, recorded as a live panel as part of the Bookworm International Literary Festival, we focus on the idea of “transformation,” and have our three guests walk through the backstories behind the China’s biggest environmental and climate headlines, including the latest from China's environmental governance reshuffling, its war on air pollution and with it the growing pains of switching from coal to gas heating, and the evolving debate over when China will be able to peak its carbon emissions.

Joining us is Sophie Lu, Head of China Research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Huw Slater, Project and Research Manager at China Carbon Forum, and Dr. Xu Shengnian, Project Officer of the Climate and Energy Team at Global Environmental Institute.

Please note: as this was our first time doing a live podcast recording, there were some slight technical issues with the sound quality that we were unable to fix. Apologies, and thank you for your understanding!

Beijing's smoggy air has sparked a wave of creativity, giving rise to a range of products that aim to protect the public and their health. One innovative start-up, Kaiterra (formerly known as Origins), creates portable, high-accuracy monitors that measure and map the world’s air. Kaiterra's "laser eggs" have shed light on pollution data that was previously hard to come by for consumers in China and worldwide.

We sit down with Liam Bates, co-founder and CEO of Kaiterra, to hear about how Kaiterra got its start, learn how laser eggs actually work, and explore the potential for a small start-up to help solve global air pollution challenges. Sneak preview: Turns out that being a Chinese TV-star DOES prepare one to become CEO of a tech company!

Check out more about Kaiterra on their website: www.kaiterra.com. 

Jade Gray set out with a mission to create the “Patagonia of Pizza.” Originally from New Zealand, today’s guest has pioneered sustainable entrepreneurship in Beijing over the past two decades. He is the co-founder of Gung Ho! Ventures, which includes the Gung Ho! Pizza restaurants in Beijing. To become the “Patagonia of Pizza,” Jade’s company has turned their operations inside out looking for ways to achieve holistic sustainability from using upcycled construction materials to cutting power use. In recent years, the company became the third “B Corp” in China. “B Corp” is a designation awarded to businesses that demonstrate excellence in their environmental, community, labor, and governance practices. We talked with Jade about how he has managed to take on sustainability in his relatively small company and how the ideas his company espouses are beginning to take root more widely in China.

You can find Gung Ho! Pizza’s B Corp evaluation here: https://www.bcorporation.net/community/gung-ho-pizza