No-nonsense China Expat Blog

One of my New Year’s resolutions in 2008 is to fight pessimism.

Anyone else fed up with BAD news about the environment? Why is it always BAD news when there are pockets of resistance all over the world fighting for the environment against something much more dangerous and insidious than the build up of greenhouse gases: apathy.

Whilst most of us sit around deciding whether or not to believe the suddenly trendy science of pop stars, carbon footprints and environmental catastrophe that reaches us via our wide-screen TVs, many without such luxurious trappings are making a difference.

The irony is that it is “lack” that is fuelling change, and in the week that a report came out suggesting that the “rich” nations owe a huge environmental debt to the “poor” nations, our so-called “developing” neighbours are embracing projects that not only improve the quality of people’s lives but also the quality of the environment.

Here then, in the much-maligned environmental monster, and one of the rest of the world’s greatest excuses for lethargy, otherwise known as China, poverty is driving a tiny environmental revolution.

I know about this because I happened to watch a BBC World “flagship” Earth Report series that returned on Monday night with an insight into how farmers in Guangxi Province, China are taking a stand for the environment.

How? This is the best bit, by turning human and animal waste (yep, excrement, feces or just plain, old-fashioned shit) into GAS.

It’s an incredibly simple technology. The central government pays half the price of building the $260 biogas “digester” in the backyard. All human and animal waste is collected there, digested, and the result is gas that can be used for cooking and lighting.

The implications for the farmers, villages and environment in Guangxi are profound. According to the Earth Report programme, full transcript here:

…7,500 hectares of trees are now saved each year…

…average income in the village has quadrupled to just over $1 per day…

…Guangxi’s 3 million…biogas digesters prevent…an estimated 8 million tons of standard coal and 13 million tons of firewood from being burned each year…

This really is a win win situation.

Known in backpackers’ circles as the place “to get away from it all” in China, I was lucky enough to visit Guangxi Province in 2005 and it was incredibly beautiful then. This project is helping it keep that way now and for the future. Bravo!

Schedule finder for BBC World’s Earth Report Series where you are: here
IFAD’s (International Fund for Agricultural Development) work in China: here