Solutions to Ecological Problems in Shanghai - Case Study Example

SHANGHAI CITY Name Institution Environmental Emissions Shanghai is a heavily populated city. Its population as 1992 was 11.9 million, as well as an urban population of about 8 million. It is one of the nation's major centers for economics, trading, finance, science, technology and culture. It is remarkably the chief base manufacturer China, In 1993, Shanghai had 39,000 industrial projects, of which the main sectors were machinery, textiles, shipbuilding, automobiles, chemicals, electronics pharmaceutical and metallurgy chemicals. With regard to a pollution cause study in 1985, the water bodies that received the most industrial wastewater were: River Huangpu and its minor tributaries: 71 per cent, Suzhou River, the major tributary, 11 per cent and river Yangtze River, Hangzhou Bay and 20 per cent from East Sea. Estimations were made that 59 per cent of the industrial wastewater was discharged directly to rivers and the rest was discharged to sewers. Nevertheless, about 69 per cent of the sewage gathered by sewerage systems was discharged indirectly to rivers and to the estuary of the Yangtze River Since 1998, a permit system for business has been established to support more venture, customer-based services, and marketized processes. By 2008, the municipality had a system of capable services on safely disposing, recycling and reuse, and incineration, covering 33 kinds of hazardous materials. The planned Study of Urban Waste Water Treatment in Shanghai projected control measures that included: centralized treatment at industrial parks, joint treatment at several suburban towns point source treatment at the industrial sources, centers, large combined sewerage collection scheme for urban centers, and disposing wastewater to the River Yangtze and effectively use of its assimilative capacity. The implementation of a contamination trading system that guarantees there is always excess assimilative capacity in the river. Solutions to Ecological Problems The development boom presented more people with chances to acquire a senior education, except also it strains the resources at colleges and universities when teachers and facilities fall short for improvement. Education solution Billions of Yuan, have been directed into campus construction by issuing state treasury bonds. In the meantime, since 1999 education financial support in the central budget has been increased by two percentage point each year, and the ratio of educational assets in GDP has reached the highest level. Importantly the socialization restructuring of rear services has been greatly quickened to reduce the burden for universities to let them concentrate chiefly on their scholarship roles. In shanghai city taxing is a major problem, a source through which the government acquire revenue. The matter is that small scale business were not reporting their taxable income honestly or as supposed to. In order to stop this, the government has to add a scratch off component to the lottery components to receipts with cash prices of 50,100,500 yuan .In that case in order to play and win, citizens or businessmen had to ask for their receipts at the stores, thus generating a taxable paper trail in the process. Consequently, carbon emission, a taxing problem for air transport, has been a major problem .To counter this all airlines using EU airports had to charge (buy permits) to any airlines using it. Resource Extraction Analysis Independent research reveals that resource extraction, deforestation and land use policy has degraded the plateau fragile eco-system .Moreover it is believed that large deforestation were a possible catalyst for massive landside that occurred in the place. The Gormo-lhasa railway line has made mining of copper, iron ore ,lead ,zinc and gold be easily accessible .The railway was intentionally routed to rich mineral areas .The plateau as well is rich in timber resource at time of invasion in 1950.Widespread logging has resulted to the felling and export f half of the forest, assuming the environmental cost. Mining implicates a serious threat to the community leaving around it. Mining operation specifically has destructive records when it comes to impacts to that environment. Gold and copper mining uses harsh chemicals to facilitate its extraction. This are cyanide and arsenic, a major concern is directed towards water contamination that arises from heap of waste material that are discarded at the mine’s site. This has largely affected river Yarilong tsampo Most of the people around the mining regions are highly dependent on agricultural based economy. The mining operations would directly affect grazing land as it would be involved in large clearing of forest to worsen the situation desecration of land caused by mining construction would force large displacement of people. As assimilative capacity means the amount of pollutants the environment can hold, here the pollutants are higher that the environment can withstand, highly catalyzed by massive extraction of the resource. To defy this, the government is dynamically involved in recruiting mining companies that have the required expert skills that includes, ensuring that ecosystem has been balanced in sequence to avoid land misuse and dereliction of fertile land. Question arises whether the resource extraction is greater that resource growth, consequently China has experienced speedy economic growth and a related quick increase in its rate of urbanization. This transition speed, along with the massive size of China’s population, has led to Shanghai being an increasingly significant driver of worldwide expansion and mineral resource demand. It specifies that, since the convergence of Shanghai’s level of economic activity and urbanization with developed countries is nowhere near completion, Shanghai will continue to be a foremost resource of demand for mineral resources for some years to come. At the end of the 1970s China started a series of economic reorganization that focused on opening up the economy to aggressive forces. In the four decades, China has experienced high and sustained economic growth. In conclusion, since the resource growth has greatly improved, resource extraction has greatly helped with this development. The benefits of recycle treated desecrates must be measured with relation to the cost of not doing so at both the economic and environmental intensity. The costs of employing zero-discharge organic desecrate to agriculture recycling system may not be expensive. Full-scale realization of urban organic desecrates to agriculture schemes could cost as little as $4-7 USD million for a capital of 1.5 million people. FLOW DIAGRAM FOR SHANGHAI CITY Policy Recommendation Shanghai should be endorsed for effectively increasing its waste management system. Safe waste discarding facilities have been extensively extended up, with an increasing exploitation rate for waste-to-energy and reuse. The recent drift of introducing MBT plants for all-inclusive treatment that entails recovering helpful and recyclable materials and chemical management of organic desecrate for compost or energy to represents a greener waste advancement. In spite of these improvements in infrastructure, the concern on domestic solid waste continues to worry Shanghai. Although utilization, reduction, and safe discarding, have been repeated as the three essential of the generally waste strategy, the focus of the government on this issue appears to be an unwarranted reverse of the sequence. Most of the attempt has been centered on secure discarding, as advanced into the enormous development of facilities. Mitigation and adaptation strategies implementation is crucial. There will be need to implement ambitious and effective mitigation policies at once, in order to actively achieve peak emissions almost immediately and uphold at least 4% global emissions cuts annually. To evade further irreversible consequences and more costs, need arises to dramatically reduce CO2-eq concentrations to be less than 350 ppm. Employing ecosystem based administration of the regions seas and coastal areas to shield vital ecosystem services that will be indispensable to counter with an uncertain and challenging future. With the addition of waste-to-energy incinerator plants, the exploitation track has geared up. Nevertheless, not much consideration has been given to the lessening track, which is most likely the most elementary aspect of a sustainable waste strategy. Promotion of guidelines for environmental friendly citizens through governmental and NGO activities should be practiced. Encouragement of shanghai residents to take personal responsibility by acting to subsequent reduce their environmental footprint, like travelling by public transport, reducing energy use, saving water, avoiding and recycling domestic waste. Participatory creative campaigns like setting up energy proficient light bulbs at home, green commuting. Development programmes should be developed on promoting a new geco-friendly citizenship for Shanghai resident, centering not only communication and education, but also bottom-up participation. Government-led schemes could be complimented with NGO and citizen-endorsed activities. More weight could be placed on the environmental rights and responsibilities of citizens in a city determined to be sustainable and voluntary carbon offsetting. NGOs can cooperate a constructive and vital role in nurturing the green citizenship evaluating data before and after the event would present practical insights on the gains and gaps of the greening hard work, that could be used to help design more precise expectations actions both for and beyond Shanghai .To ensure that water is only preoccupied by parties that hold a water abstraction permit. (e.g. those entities that do not seize water abstraction permits should be granted them) The total volume of all abstraction permits is contained by the abstraction cap set by the WRAP. Additional, where the WRAP sets precise volumes for different regions, the total abstraction permits for those regions or sectors should not go beyond the limits. The procedure of assessing applications for new abstraction permits should necessitate that the new permits only be approved if the total volume remains within the cap (regionally). The government should amend release policy for reservoirs which are required by the WRAP, to guarantee that releases of required environmental flows are made in the suitable conditions and requiring that an annual regulation arrangement be prepared based on the rules of the WRAP. It effectively guarantee that rules for sharing water between sectors are complied with, and the diverse reliabilities essential for the sectors are safe guarded. Putting into practice both mitigation and adaptation policy is critical. Need arises to apply ambitious and proficient mitigation policies instantly, in order to achieve peak emissions as soon as possible and maintain at least 4% global emissions cuts annually subsequently. To avoid additional irreversible costs the government needs to drastically reduce CO2 concentrations to be less than 340 ppm as soon as possible. Shanghai’s Environmental Assets The Yangte River is a major asset. It is best known for its upstream movement of migratory fish and to estuarine resident fish species under all scenarios. The principal threat to the latter group is possible to be a change in the allocation and accessibility of suitable spawning habitats, which are regularly located in areas with salinity levels below that of seawater. Reductions in base flows during the spawning period might cause changes in salinities in the middle and upper estuary that could possibly isolate suitable spawning sites from areas with suitable water chemistry. Floods actively play a vital role in occasional flushing estuaries and redistributing salinity incline. Freshwater dependent vegetation is a major asset. The main threat to the survival of the specie is from massive impacts on the degraded river Yangte ecosystem. The river being one of the busiest rivers has almost 410 million people living within it. Moreover the river is surrounded by numerous industries .Yangtze environment has depreciated heavily due to pollution, upstream damming and dredging. Over140 fish species in the middle of Yangtze includes (grass carp, silver carp, bighead carp) the river system supports large runs of fish (anadromous fish).The migratory fish species nevertheless, began to decline due to pollution, overfishing and habitat loss. There is a high indication that fishery resources are unexploited. The rapid industries within the river, has been highly catalyzed pollution of the waters. Pollutants discharged from the factories, has largely contributed to the ecological imbalance. The discharge of waste-water resulted in the pollution of the water, depletion of brood stock, decrease in food production and destruction of spawning grounds. The environmental assets are equally important. Consequently the risk assessment facilitates the ranking where the most significant asset is determined. Freshwater dependent vegetation is the most significant as it is a source of food for the fish species and human population. The species occupying the mudflats comes second in the ecological chain. These are fundamental species. Some of this species are a source of food to a variety number of fish species. asset Consequence score Species of commercial or national conservation significance 3 Species of recreational or regional conservational significance 2 Native specie with no particular commercial, recreational or conservation status 1 Degree of change Likelihood score Minor change in quality or extent of habitat/process 0 Major change in quality or extent of habitat/process 1 Loss of habitat or process 2 Risk matrix, show casing classes of risk of impairment for product of consequence and probable scores. Floods also play a fundamental responsibility in periodically flushing estuaries and redistributing salinity gradients. Hence these also were identified as a fundamental component of the flow regime to consider. The base flow study exposed that the high flow periods (between April-July and August- September) suffer greater reductions in base flows than did the low flow periods (between October-January and February-March). A city’s environmental credentials, and consequently its marketability, are reinforced if prospective investors can observe that sustainable resource use has been factored into the city growth stratagem, in particular the cost of known problems like limited water supplies, energy costs, the economic and job-creating potential of eco-proficient industries (e.g. waste recycling and renewable energy), and local urban agriculture Shanghai is very much pressured while dealing with waste product. Starting into the new millennium, Shanghai designed an overall waste management strategy. An aggressive plan that involved enlarging its domestic desecrates treatment facilities to include a system of incinerators, and integrated treatment facilities. Community-level eco-friendly waste compilation workshops were regular in Shanghai. The collection points were typically small in scale, privately owned, and suitably located. The collectors would re-sell the profitable waste to middlemen and finally to recycling facilities. Such a market-driven system, nearly all of the recyclable waste from households would be divided. The report given by the Shanghai Environment Protection Bureau revealed the annual waste in 2008 was 6.79 million tons, of which 5.23 million tons were treated properly. The domestic waste figures included construction waste and waste produced by households and commercial business. In 2008, every day per capita domestic waste was close to 1kg against that of over 1.5 kg in many European countries. According to evaluation of the European Environmental Agency, the residents produce less municipal waste per person. From 2001 to 2007, per capita household production was more or less steady. References: Bergère, M. (2010). Shanghai: China's gateway to modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Burdett, R. (2007). The endless city: the urban age project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society. London: Phaidon. Chen, X. (2009). Shanghai rising: state power and local transformations in a global megacity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dong, S. (2000). Shanghai: the rise and fall of a decadent city. New York, NY: William Morrow. Grant, A, J and Shaw, (2005), ‘Mining and commodities exports’, Economic Roundup, Spring edition, pp 1-15. Hauser, E. O. (1940). Shanghai: city for sale,. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.. Hook, B. (1998). Shanghai and the Yangtze Delta: a city reborn. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Knight, M., Chan, D., & Berliner, N. Z. (2010). Shanghai = [Shanghai] : art of the city. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture. Segbers, K., Raiser, S., & Volkmann, K. (2007). The making of global city regions: Johannesburg, Mumbai/Bombay, São Paulo, and Shanghai. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. United Nations (2007), “World Urbanization Prospects: the 2007 Revision”, Department of Economic and Social Affairs/Population Division, New York. Read More