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Recent Anti-Pollution Activism Underscores Importance of Community Relations

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Since the beginning of May, anti-pollution activism has been directed against several industrial projects in Chengdu, Kunming and Shanghai, China. The level of opposition has prompted street demonstrations and varying levels of response by local authorities.

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While foreign companies have not been involved in the latest examples of environmental activism, past incidents have targeted foreign companies. The latest incidents underscore the importance of early and effective two-way communication with local communities before undertaking a new industrial project.

In May, residents opposing two major industrial projects in Chengdu and Kunming stepped up their anti-pollution activism by holding protests on May 4 and May 16. Authorities in the city were also concerned that protests could occur during the opening of the China-South Asia Expo, which took place in the city June 6-10.

On May 4, media reports indicated that hundreds of protesters converged at Nan Ping Plaza in Kunming’s city center to protest plans to construct a paraxylene (PX) plant at an industrial zone in Anning city, approximately 45 kilometers southwest of Kunming.

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Also on May 4, local authorities in Chengdu reportedly increased security in the city’s downtown Tianfu Plaza to prevent anti-pollution activists from holding protests over a major refinery and petrochemical facility local authorities have been planning to construct in nearby Pengzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, the increased police presence effectively deterred protesters from holding a rally.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district, local residents also held a demonstration outside the main district government office on May 1 in opposition to a previously planned battery factory at a local industrial park. The company behind the project has since cancelled its plans, ending local opposition.

Growing Environmental Activism

These latest anti-pollution protests highlight an ongoing trend of local communities exposing potential pollution issues to environmental authorities. The scale of pollution in China, especially in major industrial areas, is a huge challenge for China’s leadership.

State media reported this week that Ministry of Environmental Protection statistics from last year revealed that 58% of underground water at the ministry’s monitoring sites around the country had been categorized as polluted or extremely polluted. The statistics also revealed that 298 million rural residents do not have access to safe drinking water. Activism and calls for greater efforts to clean up decades of pollution caused by China’s rapid industrial growth have mounted in recent months, accompanied by China’s new leadership transition.

Environmental authorities have tried to respond, but the extent of the problem will likely require years to make substantial progress in cleaning up the environment. In May, environmental authorities reported that they punished 15 factories for air and water pollution violations in the first quarter of this year. Given the scale of the problem, this number appears relatively low.

The Role of Social Media and Street Protests

The increased awareness and activism, especially in urban and suburban areas, combined with the limits of enforcement, have given rise to local communities resorting to social media to expose concerns about pollution. In some cases, local opposition has escalated to street protests if local governments are perceived as slow to respond.

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In May, local media reported that environmental authorities would investigate suspected water pollution at the Dabai Bay Industrial Zone in Shanghai’s Pudong New District. The posting of pictures online that showed blue sewage water discharged into a local river reportedly prompted local authorities to take action.

Recent protests, including some that have turned violent, have prompted local governments to suspend or cancel certain projects. The latest protests, especially against a major battery factory planned for construction in Shanghai’s Songjiang Industrial Park, have highlighted concerns about the transparency of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process and the input of local communities. According to media reports, local authorities have decided that the planned production site of the battery factory would not engage in chemical processes which can produce pollution. Instead, the project originally planned to focus on lithium cell production and battery assembly.

Although local protests have resulted in the suspension of some major projects, the importance of local GDP growth and the development of industry present challenges to local governments. The importance of the battery factory to the development of Songjiang’s auto industry prompted the local government to initially try to strike a balance between economic development and pollution concerns. According to a local resident, authorities placed notices within at least one residential community in the district to inform them of the government’s latest decision about the project. This could be an indication that the local government understood the need for greater communication with the public. It may have also been an attempt to counter a relatively well-organized online opposition campaign created by residents concerned about their health and the potential for declining property values.

Proactive Risk Mitigation

Although foreign companies typically operate at a high standard of environmental protection, the communications and community involvement aspects of an industrial project will likely become increasingly important. As residential communities and industrial areas expand and encroach on each other in suburban areas of major cities, local residents’ environmental concerns will continue to rise.

Foreign companies can encourage local governments and industrial parks to ensure the transparency of the EIA process is upheld on their project and that extensive two-way dialogue is conducted with local residents. Foreign companies should also emphasize clean technologies and other processes used to treat waste. Using similar projects in other parts of the world as examples of the high standard of their operations can also be an effective component of a campaign. Management should also be prepared for some residents to demand compensation during the community relations process.

Lastly, companies should develop contingency plans in the event that an accident occurs after a project has started operation. Plans to address this type of contingency should include increased security measures as part of a response due to the potential for strong local reactions, including protests directed against the project.

Water Woes: A Toxic (and Dwindling) Water Supply

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The nation’s vast network of underground water pipes is hitting its retirement, and in some areas sooner than others.

In Washington, D.C., alone, there is a water pipe break every day on average, according to a recent article in the New York Times. But it’s not just the nation’s capital that struggles with the infrastructure of a aging sewer system that was built around the time of the Civil War — cities such as Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Sacramento and many others are also facing an uphill sewer system battle.

This weekend’s heavy rains in Washington “overwhelmed the city’s system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Rivers.” Unfortunately, it’s not only untreated sewage that sometimes pollutes the nation’s drinking water — there’s also pharmaceuticals, lead, nickel, arsenic and a slew of other dangerous heavy metals.

In fact, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found 315 pollutants in the tap water American’s drink.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

In response to the government’s failure to set new safety standards and priorities for pollution prevention, the EWG launched a three-year project “to create the largest drinking water quality database in existence.” They rated water from big cities (those with a population more than 250,000) based on three factors:

(1) total number of chemicals detected since 2004
(2) percentage of chemicals found of those tested
(3) highest average level for an individual pollutant

And the group’s research found the following results, broken down here in an infographic from Good magazine (via I Love Charts):

dirtiest-municipal-water-systems

And in looking at the number of people served by this polluted water, we see that the clean water in the Boston area is enjoyed by millions while any negative health effects of the dirty water in Las Vegas could be widespread:

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But it is not only the issue of water quality that has been making headlines in recent years. Communities and corporations are using (and also wasting) massive amounts of water every year.

I tackled the topic of water scarcity for Risk Management last June:

In the United States, several of the fastest-growing cities are already struggling to manage water use. Years of drought in the Southeast have severely drained Lake Lanier, one of the largest lakes in the region and the major freshwater source for the majority of those living in the urban sprawl surrounding Atlanta. Las Vegas has long faced water shortage problems due to the fact that it is a city within a desert and years of astounding urbanization and population growth have placed unprecedented strain on the already-low water availability in the region. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in March and threatened, not for the first time, to implement statewide water rationing.
Globally, the problem is even more dire. The world population has already surpassed 6.6 billion and is expected to reach nearly 9 billion by 2050. With this unbridled growth, demand for freshwater is increasing by 64 billion cubic meters per year, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Looking back, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that global freshwater consumption rose six-fold-more than twice the rate of population growth-between 1900 and 1995. A similar rate of increased water consumption over the next half century would be unsustainable, meaning that the current path of overuse and mismanagement cannot continue.

In the United States, several of the fastest-growing cities are already struggling to manage water use. Years of drought in the Southeast have severely drained Lake Lanier, one of the largest lakes in the region and the major freshwater source for the majority of those living in the urban sprawl surrounding Atlanta. Las Vegas has long faced water shortage problems due to the fact that it is a city within a desert and years of astounding urbanization and population growth have placed unprecedented strain on the already-low water availability in the region. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in March and threatened, not for the first time, to implement statewide water rationing.

Globally, the problem is even more dire. The world population has already surpassed 6.6 billion and is expected to reach nearly 9 billion by 2050. With this unbridled growth, demand for freshwater is increasing by 64 billion cubic meters per year, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Looking back, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that global freshwater consumption rose six-fold-more than twice the rate of population growth-between 1900 and 1995. A similar rate of increased water consumption over the next half century would be unsustainable, meaning that the current path of overuse and mismanagement cannot continue.

Not helping the water scarcity issue are water-intensive industries such as agriculture, energy/oil, mining, food and beverage manufacturing, semiconductors and apparel. Agricultural processes alone account for a whopping 70% of all fresh water used.

This water usage has not gone unnoticed. Recent criticisms of such industries has prompted some corporations to initiate new, less water-intensive processes.

One such company is Anheuser-Busch InBev.

By the end of 2012, the company plans to whittle down its worldwide water use by 30% to 3.5 hectoliters for each hectoliter of production compared with 5.03 hectoliters in 2007. Each hectoliter is about 26.4 gallons. Water use last year was roughly 113.6 gallons, or 4.3 hectoliters, for each hectoliter of beer produced. The company’s brewery in Cartersville, Ga., has already reached the 3.1-hectoliter mark.

Reaching the goal would be the equivalent of saving enough water to fill 25,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, Anheuser-Busch InBev said. Since 2000, the brewer has already decreased water use by nearly 37%, it said.

The LA Times coverage naturally focuses on the “green” aspect, lauding the bottling company for its efforts to help Mother Nature and also discussing its plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions. But you have to think that pure altruism isn’t the sole motivation here. The company is certainly aware that, in the future, water will be a scarcer — and more expensive — commodity and is starting to adjust now by increasing its efficiency.

And Anheuser-Busch isn’t the only company working to waste less water. Texas Instruments, who, along with Intel, used more than 11 billion gallons of ultra-pure water for silicon chip production in 2007, has taken steps to reuse and recycle the vast amount of water it uses on a daily basis. But industries are still a far cry away from realizing in full the impact their water usage has on the earth.

And even if for those that do realize it, many times, revenue means more than waste.

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