Protest in Guangzhou: Why would you burn garbage?
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Is water the new oil? Current TV takes us around China for a look at the reservoirs that have dried up, the arable land that's turned into large swathes of desert, rivers in urban spaces that have become dumps for human and chemical waste and the people's lives that have been affected. It also highlights the army of environmental NGO's that have sprung up only recently and their battle against time.
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No wonder that big industry cooperations invested in water and water rights all over the world...
It is unfortunate, but it takes large scale issues to flip the triggers of civil society.
Ma Jun and the rest of the eNGOs are being granted more support, and awareness is at an all time high, but the problem is that NGOs are small... rarely are they coordinating.. and they have ZERO operational skills in terms of actually cleaning up the problems.
So the question is not whether or not there are problems, it is who will really clean the problems up. Who is developing the solutions? Who has the power to really bring the changes?
China Dialogue (www.chinadialogue.net) and Crossroads (www.china-crossroads.com) have done a lot in this regard, and Crossroads has about 20 interviews of eNGO leaders on Youtube (www.youtube.com/chinacrossroads) as well.
Clearly a lot of work to do.. just need solutions more than more reports
Yikes, water shortages are definitely problems all over the world. As much as NGOs try to do though, a lot of the effort depends on people in richer areas not using up water like it's (almost) free. There needs to be more initiatives to get ppl to take shorter showers, invest in low-flush (or even compostable) toilets and learn about methods to reduce other types of water usage.
Yes, MNCs and IBs are investing heavily in water rights. In this respect western countries have more to fear as water treatment companies who began charging too much for tap water were taken over by national governments in S. America, Africa, China and India.
But in places like China foreign companies will be under the gun from local NGOs and federal regulators while domestic companies still abuse water resources and use local police and thugs to back up their operations.
I've also recently found an article about Russia using its vast water resources as a tool for political power over central Asia and China. I'll post that article later.