Recently, PBS has been running a series called China from the Inside that covers a range of topics focused on hot button or social issues, and this week’s episode - Shifting Nature - the focus is on the impact of China’s growth on its environment.

To date, it is one of the best productions I have seen to date on the issue of sustainable development as it relates to China’s hyperdevelopment.  What is telling about this piece is the fact that some of China’s most senior people go on record with PBS to discuss the problems that China faces, what they are trying to do about it, and how far they have to go.

Watching this movie should be required of everyone, especially given algae blooms are already showing in three of China’s largest lakes, and the problems are only getting worse and worse.

Split into 6 clips (I posted the 1st on main site, and last 5 after the break) of about 8-9 minutes each, so give yourself some time to watch this at one go…

Part 1:

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Last year, China was given a wake up call.  Its largest bodies of fresh water were turning into a pea soup from algae blooms.  It was in the middle of summer, we had been experiencing a drought, and chemicals reacted. Residents were unable to drink the water, industry was forced to shut down, and crop damage occured.

It was a mess.

To the credit of the central  government,  action was quick.  Polluters  were  shut down, the water  was  “cleaned” and water service resumed.

This year though, 4 months early, the algae blooms are back.  Last week Taihu reportedly saw its first blooms, then Daichi, and not Chaohu.

Where this year and last year differ is that this year could see larger problems.  After all, the algae is 4 months early!  and while I am not a water scientist, my hunch is that it gets back to the drought last year.

Outside of the major snow storm, and some recent rain, China has been fairly dry in the Yangtze Delta.  This mean that lakes, river, and other bodies of water are seeing levels drop.. and that means that concentration levels of everything in the water are going up (think of fresh orange juice vs the frozen stuff).. and that means that the catalyst reactions that form the algae blooms can occur more easily.

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As yet another citizen protest takes place in a major city [in Chengdu, about a PetroChina project], it is necessary to reflect, not just on this new activism we are seeing and how it is organised electronically, nor even how this kind of activism could be either seen (by most commentators) as either a safe way of self-expression (when lacking other means) or as an act of expression that could become dangerous if it changes its focus.

From a business perspective it is necessary to see this as a pointer that although you might follow the relevant procedures (Impact Assessments etc) and get the relevant government approval (though many argue that often only lip service is paid to such procedures), this is not enough. Communities -society- are expecting greater from business. Business must remember that they operate in a marketplace and the rules of that marketplace are set by many different groups of stakeholders: the government only being one, and, actually the government is the one with the most clear-cut rules: they are written down and you can obey them. But for the other stakeholders in society (customers, employees, business partners, communities) their rules are complex, variable, manipulated and hard to predict.

Businesses need to try their best to understand these stakeholder’s rules (or expecations) in order to meet them and deal with problems before they become problems. It is (as Crossroads has said many times) much cheaper (business likes that word) and efficient (business likes that word too) to prevent problems from arising than to deal with them after they arise. Granted PetroChina might not care much about the protest in Chengdu as it is not a consumer facing company, but, there will still be impacts on the company’s reputation and, as I expect, the government will now pay stricter attention to the procedures PetroChina has (or has not) followed as the government is presumably keen to want to avoid further demonstrations in the future.

PetroChina publishes a CSR report like many of China’s biggest, listed or most successful companies, and through this process should be engaging in more stakeholder dialogue. In fact, although PetroChina’s CSR report (like most of the other CSR reports in china) still have a way to go (a good start, by all means), it would be fantastic if, in next year’s report, they do a case study on the Chengdu investment and related protests. It could analyze what it did wrong, why the protests took place, how it dealt with them, how and what is has learned from this issue and so forth. That would  be fantastic reading and be the perfect demonstration of what a CSR report can be used for: for internal, introspective improvement, as well as external transparency showing the World that PetroChina does understand the importance of engagement and has learn its lesson. Let’s see!

Painting a school is one of my favorite activities. We have painted 6 so far, and have another 4 planned for this summer… and this Youtube does a great job of showing why

For a long time the skeptic in me has been of the opinion that the Chinese government is a very capable administration and can get almost anything done if it REALLY wants to; a case in point being organising the Olympics, dealing with SARS, dealing with the child labour issues in the Shanxi brick kilns amongst other examples.

The government has paid little attention to really enforcing the law in the manufacturing industry, preferring a bad factory that creates jobs and pays taxes to a closed down factory, or a factory that by meeting standards was not as cost efficient and thus less successful. There are, of course, exceptions, but at the local level, where the responsibility for enforcing laws lie, there has been little enforcement. It is not easy to enforce the law in such a big country, especially with so many competing interests which influence the enforcers!

The recent problem with child labour being dealt with in Dongguan which surprises no-one in the industry shows that when the government allocates resources to deal with the problem it can do. Now, if the government were to investigate the use of child labour across China, and not just in Dongguan, it would be a massive undertaking, but one that is clearly feasible (at least to some extent). The question is, is the government really interested in tackling this issue and enforcing the law?

Aside from this issue, the other interesting point about the child labour case in Dongguan is that the problem was identified and investigated by the media and once the case highlighted in the media, the government started to act. This is a very positive sign -not just that the media did some pretty good reporting in this case, but that the government allowed it to print the story! I am very happy to see this trend of Chinese media becoming more interested in investigating these issues and continuously pushing the boundaries (gently) of what they can and cannot report.

Earth2Tech has an excellent writeup of IBM’s push to reduce the amount of power (carbon footprint) that is required to run, maintain, and cool its data centers… a staggering 5 billion kilowatts.

the problem:

IBM, which hosts computing operations for itself and external customers, needs more compute power because more applications and entities are demanding it. It’s kind of like buying a hybrid car and doubling your commute. You may consumer less gas per mile, but your energy expenditure remains the same.

The solution(s):

On the software side last year IBM added updates to its power management programs and its Tivoli systems management software. The updates can be used to reduce power as well as see ways hardware can be more efficiently configured to conserve power. The company is also taking a look at its software code to see if it can be trimmed to run without taxing a processor as much as older software can.

On the hardware side, IBM is focusing on more power efficient chips. It is also designing chips with air pockets for cooling or using water to cool chips, such as in its Hydro-Cluster supercomputer. Water can be used to cool heat dissipated from server racks, which IBM employs in the iDataPlex products announced this week. These sort of tricks should reduce heat coming from servers and cut down on the amount of air conditioning a data center requires.

On the services and consulting side, IBM is helping clients reduce their data center footprints by using server consolidation, improving the layout of the racks in the data center, and other power-saving techniques. IBM also has a hardware recovery program that recycles older equipment.

The cost/ benefit:

Leichner says IBM spends $100 million a year designing its products to be more recyclable and recycling them. Last year about half of the internal parts in IBM servers were comprised of recycled plastics. The company also recycled 1 billion pounds of equipment last year and currently accepts 40,000 devices for recycling every week.

Christina Larson has been one of my favorite writers on China’s environment for a while, and this week her article To save rivers, she helps farmers was published in the Christian Science Monitor.

A topic that I seem to be running into more and more, Larson’s core focus of the article is the relationship between agriculture and water pollution.

Like the 11 year old in Chongqing we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Larson’s article follows a Chengdu resident as she looked to clean up Chengdu’s water and followed the evidence upstream.. literally.

Unlike many articles, and many lines of thought, the evidence did not lead her to a mega factory that was dumping its chemicals out the back door.  It lead to the farms that fed the city with produce.

A PSA has been placed on youtbe about Hep B in china, why one should be vacinated, and the process of being vaccinated… and it is well done.

This month in the Washington Monthly, TA Frank writes a very interesting piece on factory conditions in China called Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector (h/t CSR Asia).

With one of the key tenants of CSR, and Crossroads, being labor I highly suggest readers take the time to make their way through this article as it is written not from the journalist perspective.. but from a former auditor turned journalist.

using his experience to address a larger topic - how to regulate labor compliance, and how to enforce it - Frank’s provides a window into some of the adminstration of labor compliance and inspctions.. getting client buy in, the motivations of clients, the difficulties of getting suppliers to open up, the cat/ mouse game of interviews… and so on.

On of the more honest paragraphs is:

For the half-assed company there are also half-assed monitoring firms. These specialize in performing as many brief, understaffed inspections as they can fit in a day in order to maximize their own profits. That gives their clients plausible deniability: problems undiscovered are problems avoided, and any later trouble can be blamed on the compliance monitors. It is a cozy understanding between client, monitoring company, and supplier that manages to benefit everyone but the workers.

It is another angle that I think complements the movies A Decent Factory and China Blue

CSR Asia highlighted a recent press AMD release that in their words is:

the longest mainstream media piece on corporate giving I’ve seen.

In Chinese (Google translation here) , the story covers what looks to be about 6 months worth of activities (computer donations) in Yunnan, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and other places … and it is long (I thought it was a blog post to be honest).

Length aside, if you are looking to learn more about AMD’s philanthropic efforts in China, I suggest you read it.  they are touching some of Chinese poorest regions, and the schools surely need the equipment.

couple of questions I would be interested in knowing the answer;

1) Are they funding teachers as well?

2) What are the long term goals of this program?

3) Who will maintain the computers?

4) Could the AMD Sticker be any bigger?