Last week when I wrote, Get Them When They Are Young, over at Cleaner Greener China I was not planning a follow up post.

However, this morning while walking to work I was reminded of just how important environmental education is, how important it is to teach environmental education, and just how far China has to go. Perhaps one of the most interesting cultural/ fashion statements there is in china, many infants (up to age of 3) will don a set of pants that are split down the middle.  the purpose is simple.. to make doing to the bathroom easier.  No matter where one happens to be.

• Middle of the sidewalk.  Ok
• Middle of the subway platform.  Ok
• Middle of the road.  Ok
• Public park.  Ok
• Apartment Lobby.  Ok
• In front of car.  Ok
• Side of car.  Ok
• From back of bike.  Ok
• While mom holds your legs.  Preferable
• While Grandma holds your legs. Sure
• Dad holds your legs.  odd??

Initially, it was one of those things that you look on with a mix of curiousity and a mix of repulsion.  I once even asked a teacher about this practice, and was given a look that made me think I was asking the dumbest question ever.  Of course babies are allowed to poo and pee on the street… “their poos are special!” However, what I think is important to point out here is that while it may be quick, easy, and convenient for mom, these children are actually learning their first lesson in environmental protection… and I am not talking about compost. As my flatmate in Beijing so appropriatly said “If you teach a kid that they can crap on the street, you have taught them they can do anything they want”. If you think about it, the lesson learned is the ultimate lesson in selfishness.. that it is ok to expect people to walk through my wii (and more).  That one does not need to hold it until the next public toiley… that anywhere it is physically possible to squat IS A TOILET. With that as a foundation, China’s children are supposed to learn not to litter, not to dump chemicals in rivers, to conserve energy, and to think of the impact that one has on the environment… and how that will impact others.

In China, one must learn to understand that not everything is as it seems, and that even when something is known… it is not.. and even if it should be known.. it may not be…

In China, it is called an “open secret”, where it does not necessarily have to be published or spoken of on TV… but a lot of people know about it.   Sometimes it is benign, but more often than not it is not.

The recent report Report: China’s animal feed tainted with melamine highlights just how serious the issues underlying “open secrets” can be… and just how dangerous they can be:

Animal feed producers in China commonly add the industrial chemical melamine to their products to make them appear higher in protein, state media reported Thursday, an indication that the scope of the country’s latest food safety scandal could extend beyond milk and eggs.

The practice of mixing melamine into animal feed is an “open secret” in the industry, the Nanfang Daily newspaper reported

for me, this story highlights several huge gaps in China’s system.

1) How is it that a large number of people can be in the know about adding a precursor chemical to milk and dairy, and no one say anything?

2) How is it that leaders of industry, regualtory agencies, and government bodies fail to act when such “open secrets” are so abundant?

At the same time, a story/ condition like this show me the following:

1) “face”  still hold priority over safety - including those who are supposed to be protecting the public

2) There is a dire need for independent parties who inspect products and can warn consumers

Now, I realize that this is a lot to ask, and I do not deny that I am throwing stones at a glass house (my own country just failed to protect our citizens from greed), but in the long run China is going to need to begin proactively steming problems before something goes horribly wrong.  To have an issue of face inhibit a process that protects the general public is not only criminal, it is counter productive, and had the authorities take steps early on the would have actually gained more face.

Mal-nutrition is a threat to school-age children in rural China: the anemia rate is 18%, stunted growth 26% and vitamin A deficiency 44.1%. A national survey shows wide spread deficiency in calcium, iron, and vitamin A.

Taking a tour to the primary and middle schools in rural China, you’ll see many children there who walk several miles from home to school, eat two meals per days with just simple breads, and have no nutrition catering either at home or at school. Those scenarios you will see are separated but intertwined: because children are living far away from the school, it’s difficult for them to manage three meals per day; because the family is generally lack of knowledge in nutrition, children’s parents or grandparents are just providing whatever they think could fill up children’s stomach such as simple breads; school won’t take this responsibility of catering children’ nutrition needs as they are lacking the resource to handle students’ nutrition issue and at the same time might not lack of the incentives to add this into their Education priority. The school mapping policy (merge different spread out village schools into one Centre Township school so that education resource could be more concentrated to improve the teaching quality) has also significantly impacted rural school-age children’s nutrition in-take as many children have to live even further away from home and do not have sufficient in-take of vegetables and dairy products. Parents lack awareness and capacity to ensure children’s nutrition while no investment is made at school to contra balance the issue. Poor hygiene practice and sanitation facilities also further deteriorate nutrition status.

There are different ways to tackle this issue, either through charitable donation or market solution, but both ways would have difficulties to make a sustainable solution. For charitable donation, it would be very difficult for any organization to continuously provide financial support for food supply within the schools. For market solution, the profit margin will be very little if anyone runs a restaurant in the rural schools, not to mention that rural schools are generally lack of basic facility for restaurant business; also profit driven school restaurant might not be able to meet children’s nutrition needs taken into the consideration of the actual price that rural children’s family can afford.

A good solution that some NGO has been trying to provide is to combine the two, charitable donation and market solution, into one model which is replicatable and sustainable. There has been some School Nutrition Program in Western China run by international NGO and it has proved to be quite useful in tackling the nutrition issue in the rural schools. The idea is to first provide cash donation to help build related school facility such as dinning hall and kitchen in the schools and then start a biding process to recruit local people who are willing to run the restaurant business in the school; there should be a control of the number of restaurants who will get the bid as healthy competition will offer more competitive food price for the school students. After the bidding, specific guidelines on nutrition, hygiene and price will be offered to the school restaurants so that students could enjoy healthy and nutritional food with reasonable price every day at school. As for some expensive nutritional food materials such as meats and milks, creative gift program could be set up to provide subsidies for the students, for example through setting up fundraising campaign to encourage the public to ‘Donate a pig to rural school in China’ and ‘Donate a cow to rural school in China’. Different stocks that have been fundraised could later be bred by either the school or the local village households and be sent to the school restaurants to proceed with a cheap and nutritional menu for school students. In this way, a sustainable model with the combination of charitable donation and market solution is created to help the children in rural schools get the necessary nutrition for a healthy growth.

There are also other ideas to think about along this nutrition program such as: collaborating with the local education bureau, educating the local community -specifically children, parents and village representatives, simple and innovative nutrition measurement system that children will self-administer, integrating external experts support, etc.

The sustainability of a program could always mean creating long lasting motives for community members to work towards the single goal, changing people’s mindset for making better decisions, or advocating a successful model to government so that a right policy could be set to benefit the society long-termly on a while. In the process of designing a sustainable program, it’s worthwhile to always bear in mind that profit generating business model could sometimes be more sustainable than one time charitable donation and this could benefit the some program which could take the advantage of the two.

London’s Economist magazine released a new study, which found that:

31 percent of Chinese consumers identify the environmental as a higher priority than the economy    versus 17 percent of U.S. consumers and 28 percent of UK consumers. The study was conducted by one of the world’s largest global communications services companies WPP’s agencies Landor Associates, Cohn & Wolfe and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB).

Chinese consumers say that their environmental concerns influence their purchasing intent: 69 percent expect to spend more money on green products in the coming year. This contrasts markedly with the US, where only 38 percent of consumers expect to increase their spending on green products in 2009, and the UK where just 33 percent will spend more.

www.china.org.cn

I must say that I am a little skeptical of this article as it tries to paint a slightly rosier picture than I find day-to-day. First question I must ask is which consumers in China were surveyed exactly? I could see this being the case in bigger cities like Beijing and Shanghai since they have focused more on the environment due to the Olympics and the upcoming Expo; but as a representative sample of the Chinese population? ? I’m not sure that I trust that 31 percent statistic.

Second, yes, maybe more Chinese consumers will alter their purchasing toward green products; but we have to remember simple statistics here. China has many more consumers new to buying green, so the pool is much greater for people to spend more money on green products if they never have before. In the U.S./U.K. consumers have been exposed to green products for quite some time, thus, the pool for buying more green products is not as great. Thus, I don’t necessarily agree that Chinese consumers are more green than UK/US consumers.

If anyone else is curious or can give me more statistical analysis lessons, let me know. The full article is here: http://www.china.org.cn/environment/opinions/2008-10/06/content_16568827.htm

Watching my housekeeper wash my 17th story windows enlightened me a great deal.  She was dangling out the window with a wet rag in one hand and a firm grip on the open window frame on the other.  In my mind, I was thinking a stiff breeze or a hiccup was all it would take for her to lose her balance, and from that day forward she had a long broom to work with.  She was not to dangle herself out of my window again.

To me, it was pretty clear, but to her it was just a normal part of doing the job.  A risk she was willing to take.

have been in factories where goggles and hearing protection were provided by management (sometimes even customers who were concerned), but they go unworn because they are uncomfortable or are not seen as needed “at that moment”

Whether you look at the coal industry, stamping, or dozens of other dirty jobs that exist, there are people who are willing to take those jobs and risk life or limb everyday as part of their jobs.  Some say it is due to the “it will never happen to me” attitude, while others say there is no other way.  That they have to take the job to pay bills, save for their child’s tuition, or take care of an ill family member

This recent article (warning: the first picture is GRAPHIC), highlights a recent case of a worker who was impaled by a piece of rebar on a construction site.

This construction worker underwent life-saving surgery after a 3ft-long metal screw fell from a bridge and speared his throat.

Now, were he wearing safety equipment (ropes), perhaps he would not have fallen from the bridge, but anyone who has been to a construction site in China will tell you that the ropes were probably 1 of 100 safety items that were missing, and his case is not all that uncommon.

It is interesting that only 10 months ago, China’s labor law came online, yet no where in the law does it address labor safety.  China’s union, All China Federation of Trade Unions, is as the only union in China supposed to be looking out for its members on issues of safety, but many will tell you that they do not fulfill that role to the level they should.

There are NGOs on the ground who are working on these issues, and of course there are plently of audit firms who will galdly inspect the conditions at facilities their clients need, but where is the larger policy piece.  Where is OSHA?

How much of workplace safety is part of vocational training?

My first exposure to being deaf in China was inteh airport when what appeared to be a group of high schoolers were waiting by the gate signing to each other.  Initially my curiosity lead me to wonder if the signs they were using were the same as the ones others used in the US, Uk, or other location.  Was apple still apple?

In the next line of thought though I realized that I had been in China 3 years (at that time), and this was the first time that I had been exposed to the deaf in China.

In overcoming stigmas of any kind, education plays a critical role, and as a part of this process it is important that public awareness campaigns are linked in some way to overcoming the unknowns of a disability.

In China, being deaf is not a statistical anomaly by any means:

The latest statistics show China has about 20 million people with hearing disabilities, which is about 20 percent of the world’s total. Among them, more than 800,000 are children below the age of six. The number is increasing at a rate of 20,000 to 30,000 kids per year.

So, when I see that China’s Association of the Deaf will celebrate International Day of the Deaf through a three day event (Oct 30 - Nov 2) , I see another step in this process taking place.

Initially designed to give the children:

“a chance to learn more about treatment from recovery institutions, hearing aid companies and alike,” said Yangwho is also a councilor of China Disabled Persons’ Federation. “Three local deaf speakers will also share their experiences in learning how to speak.”

I also hope that the event will be showcased in a way that opens up the minds of a wider audience.  In Shanghai, I am now seeing on a semi-regular basis the deaf communicating on the streets with one another, and while I have yet to see an act of ignorance in their presence occur - my conversations with others who are handicap will admit that public stigmas still exist for them.

Growing up in America, getting CPR certified was something that everyone could do should they want to.

following the 5.12 earthquake I thought about this more and more, especially as many of the volunteers who showed up in Sichuan did so without basic knowledge of first aid.

It is encouraging to see that Ruijin Hospital and the Luwan Government are now making it possible to learn CPR in Shanghai.

The training is a collaborative effort by Ruijin Hospital and the Luwan District Health Bureau. It’s part of their campaign to provide more comprehensive services to people with common diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, breast cancer and cardiovascular and cerebral ailments.

It is especially important given the grim statistics of having a heart attack in China:

Since 70 to 80 percent of heart attacks take place outside a hospital and less than 1 percent of such patients are saved in China, the hospital decided to provide education and training in first-aid skills to community doctors, ambulance staff, patients, family members and police patrol officers.

only 1% save rate…

When first learning of China’s HIV situation, it was blood contamination in rural areas of China and drug abuse in southwest China that were most frequent.  However, this has changed.

Sexual activity has replaced intravenous drug use as the major cause of the spread of AIDS in China, a report from the Ministry of Health said.

Whether it is ravers in Shanghai, or truckers along China’s new national highway, sexual transmission has now become the leading means by which HIV/ AIDS is being spread, and in my opinion this will be a turning point.

The report found the ratio of sexually transmitted infections had risen steadily, with heterosexual and male homosexual transmission climbing to 37.9 percent and 3.3 percent in 2007, respectively, from 10.7 percent and 0.4 percent in 2005, respectively.

With historically the largest clusters bring found in the southwest from opium usage, in Henan/ Anhui from blood contamination, and Guangdong from a mix - the merging of these clusters through sexual activity will make it much more difficult to slow the spread of this disease, and it will surely slow the prevention measures as well (education programs will have to grow in geographic size).

The relatively low rate of condom use was to blame, the report said.

A point, another report just released by the UN AIDS drives home following a survey of 6,000 people

More than 48 per cent of respondents in six of China’s major cities said they believed they could be infected with HIV through mosquito bites, while 83 per cent had never looked up information on HIV/AIDS and 30 per cent did not know how to use a condom, UNAIDS said in a report.

Nearly 65 per cent said they would not be willing to live with someone infected with HIV, 48 per cent said they were unwilling to eat with an HIV-infected person, and 41 per cent were unwilling to work with an HIV-infected person, the report said.

to learn more about HIV/ AIDS in China, here are some links:

UNAIDS China

Avert

Red Cross Society of China:HIV Programme 2008 - 2010 (PDF)

If there were ever a program in the waiting, it is this one, and I challendge a firm that has been looking for an out of the box program to take this one on.

working with orphanes of prisoners, this orphanage is dealing with some of the fundamental issues and stigmas that China faces.  the children, not offenders themselves, essentially are on their own and were it not for the founder and director of this orphanage they wouldn’t have a place to go.

In this interview, Environmental Defense China’s Director Zhang Jianyu gives us an introduction to the organization’s work, EDF’s experience as a foreign organization and discusses some environmental hurdles China faces. Segments I found very interesting relate to how actions have to be adpated in the China setting due to different political and legislative structures.

For example, since many bureaucracies regulate once single industry in China, EDF China is working with industries instead of the government because industry is more consistent than the bureaucracies that control them. Another interesting segment relates to how Mr. Zhang feels that China is already environmental consciousness but finds it very hard to get people to act sustainably.

The reason he gives is because of the traditional reliance on the government to act first and the population to follow. He comments that China does not have a history of people’s involvement with decision-making and, therefore, people do not take the initiative to make long-term concrete change. This is why Mr. Zhang feels that it is even more important to find the economic incentives here in China to bring about this change.

Part 1

Part 2