1. China’s environmental problems
1) Serious water pollution. Water is most indispensable to people’s life. Contaminated water will seriously affect people’s normal life and cause environmental degradation, putting people in the danger of catching various diseases. Therefore, everyone should save water and make full use of it. However, in China, water pollution is getting worse. China has abundant water resources but there are still some regions frequently suffering from draught and lack of water. Especially in recent years, following the rapid economic growth, the increasingly serious problem of water pollution is presenting hazards for people’s life, which needs the attention of the central government.
2) Serious soil erosion. Most of the countries around the world suffer from severe soil erosion and China is one of them. Highly erosion-prone areas in China are the yellow-land area in the northwest, red-land area in the south and the black-land area in the northeast.
3) Serious air pollution. Take the acid rain pollution for instance. It is the most severe air pollution problem in China. In recent years, due to massive emissions of sulfur dioxide, China is facing a deteriorating and alarming acid rain problem, with the acid rain-prone area spreading from the south and southwest provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Guizhou, to the central part of Changsha and Nanchang, and also gradually reaching the east coast cities, such as Xiamen and Shanghai.
2. Causes to these environmental problems
In the early stages of economic development, the environmental problems mentioned above were not as grave as today. In the past decades when China experiences an economic bloom, more and more environmental problems are also revealing themselves in this country. These problems are caused by various factors.
First, excessive industrialization and urbanization have caused environmental pollutions. In early economic development, the government carried out the development strategy of propelling industrialization, which, at first, had little influence on the environment. However, as some environmentally-ravaging industries were built and the pace of industrialization quickened, more and more pollutants, especially those untreated three industrial wastes (waste water, waste gas, and waste residue) are being emitted into the air, rivers and lakes, causing serious environmental disruption. Besides, urbanization is also an important factor. It has caused severe damage to the city environment and worsened the situation.
Second, population is continuously growing, which has imposed a great burden to the environment. Environmental problems are closely related to the size of population the environment accommodates. If the
population grows excessively and goes beyond the carrying capacity of the environment, the latter will be severely destroyed and the consequences will in turn be a disaster to humans. However, nowadays, people are doing damages to the environment by means of clearing forests and filling lakes for land, cutting trees and removing vegetation. Moreover, growing population also leads to an increase of industrial and household wastes and causes worrying water pollution and air pollution problems.
Third, people lack the awareness of environmental protection. Nowadays, many enterprises dodge the national policies and regulations regarding environmental preservation and carry out productions merely in the pursuit of economic profit and returns. Little attention is put on protecting the environment. Still worse, residents also are unaware of the environmental seriousness. It is not uncommon to see people spitting and littering on the street, using disposable chopsticks and plastic bags and throwing wasted foamed plastics around. These inappropriate behaviors do great harm to the look of cities and the natural environment as a whole.
3. Analysis of the sustainable development of environment
Environmental protection is of great significance for the current period and will remain a long-term and arduous task for the future. We should put great emphasis on protecting the environment while advancing the economy and ultimately achieve the sustainable development of both economy and environment. To reach this goal, first of all, we must find a balance between economic growth and environmental preservation. To some extent, these two tasks are of an interdependent and complementary relationship. The ultimate goal of developing economy is to meet people’s growing material and cultural needs and improve people’s living standards, while protecting the environment is also to achieve healthy economic development and create good living conditions for people. On the other hand, the two things can also restrain each other. The continuous economic development may destroy the balance in nature and cause increasingly serious problems. Conversely, the deterioration of environment will inevitably hamper economic growth and lead to great loss. Second, we should be aware of the serious consequences of environmental degradation. It may disturb people’s life and work and worse still, make people suffer from severe diseases. Therefore, we must pay great attention to protecting the environment when boosting the economy and take effective measures to achieve a harmonious development of the two causes.
1) Reduce damage to the environment. A good environment is the prerequisite to healthy economic development. By advancing the economy, we can effectively reduce damage to the environment. The traditional industrial production mode has caused serious pollution to the nature and greatly harmed the eco-system, which is a hidden threat to the sustainable economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary to transform the growth pattern and associate economic progress with environmental preservation.
2) Strengthen the environmental awareness of the general public. Basically, we should encourage everyone to protect the environment and deal with environment-related problems by organizing educational activities to improve people’s legal consciousness and popularizing the concept of environmental protection on the media. More importantly, we should regulate our own behaviors, start from details and at the same time, make the general public have a real understanding of the importance of protecting the environment.
3) Put more efforts to environmental protection. First, we must improve the legal system and regulations concerning environmental protection and increase law enforcement. Enterprises that have caused serious pollutions, especially chemical and pharmaceutical enterprises, should be ordered to eliminate pollutions within a limited time or be indefinitely shut down for treatment. The government now is cracking down illegal practices that are damaging the environment. Second, more investment should be put in environment protection. At present, there is still insufficient investment in this field and many environmental problems remain unsolved due to a lack of financial support.
4) Get more support from the government for the development of environmental protection industry. Currently, this industry in China is far from well-developed and mature, still not able to meet the needs of environmental protection. Therefore, the government should put more attention to the development of this industry so as to change the current environmental conditions. One of the most important strategies is to develop and use environment-friendly products. We should develop advanced technologies through innovations and keep boosting the environmental protection industry continuously.
In conclusion, as the current environmental problems in China are mostly the results of unscientific development of economy, we must draw a lesson from these mistakes and pay due attention to dealing with environmental problems, so as to prevent these problems from impeding the economic growth. We should also make full use of all the available resources to create favorable conditions and eventually achieve the sustainable development of both economy and environment.
(Author: from China Unicom, Jixi Branch)