China: ecological footprint?

Is China an environmental pariah or not, asks the New Scientist. It depends if you are looking at statistics per person or per metre. 

Beijing now vies with the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, although its contribution to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions has been quite modest: it accounted for only 9.3% of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use during 1950-2002 and its per capita carbon footprint is quite small. Yet China's average 'ecological footprint' -- the total area required to produce the food, fiber and timber that it consumes, absorb its waste, and provide space for its infrastructure -- has doubled since the 1960s, says a recent report from the environment group WWF and a Chinese government agency, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.  The study says China runs an 'ecological deficit' with the rest of the world, consuming twice what its own ecosystems can provide. By that measure, it is a worse offender than some much richer countries that use more resources per head but have larger land areas, including the United States. 

China: ecological deficit
Land Types	Total Ecological Footprint (million gha)	Total Biocapacity (gha)
Source: CCICED-WWF
Crop Land	530	450
Grazing Land	160	160
Forest	150	210
CO2 from fossil fuels	990	-
Nuclear Energy	10	-
Built-up Land	90	90
Fishing Ground	220	120
Total	2150	1030

• Individual lifestyle: China's ecological footprint in 2003 was 1.6 global hectares per person, the 69th highest country in the world, and lower than the world average ecological footprint of 2.2 global hectares per person.
• Huge consumer: Yet China consumes 15% of the world's total biological capacity, the second most of any nation in the world. Although its biological capacity continues to grow through the expansion of productive lands and the introduction of new technologies, each year the residents of China demand more than twice what the country's own ecosystem can sustainably supply.
• Poor potential: The potential for increasing China's total productive area is not great; the report says the only possibilities for increasing China's biocapacity lie in improving yields in already productive areas.
• Growing demands: If China were to follow the lead of the United States, where each person demands nearly 10 hectares of productive area, China would consume the available capacity of the entire planet.
• Covering the deficit: China partially covers its deficit by importing biological capacity, in the form of natural resources, from other nations. In 2003, China imported 130 million global hectares from outside its borders, nearly equivalent to the entire biological capacity of Germany.

Driven by increasing resource demands for both domestic consumption and production for export -- as well as the poor potential for increasing China's total productive area -- Beijing will continue to import biocapacity from other nations. Given the dramatic urbanisation and economic development in the country, the consumption of meat and diary products will likely begin to play a larger role in the diet of Chinese people. This is expected to lead to greater cropland and grassland biocapacity imports in the future.

All the while, its carbon footprint increases: the US International Energy Agency extrapolates from current trends to predict that by 2030 China's greenhouse gas emissions will be twice those of all other industrialised countries. China sees threats from climate change, for example, to its glaciers in Tibet, affecting farming downstream, and to its more prosperous coastal areas, should sea levels rise.

Beijing insists that developed countries should not expect it to sacrifice the benefits of growth that the latter already enjoy. That said, self-interest dictates that China redouble its efforts to address the dangers of continuing environmental degradation.