Over the past few years China has been experiencing increasingly long flood seasons, extending into the Autumn months, according to a recent Operations Update by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Green Watershed from Yunnan and Green Hanjiang from central Hubei were placed first in, respectively, ‘environment protection’ and ‘education’ categories of a Ford Motor Company conservation and environmental grants competition that has announced awards totalling CNY 1 million (USD 123,457) to sixteen organisations and individuals in Beijing.

With ten years remaining to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, China seems unlikely to achieve water and sanitation targets. Obstacles include scarce, unevenly distributed and increasingly polluted water resources, a legacy of supply side policies, and a confused division of institutional responsibilities. The government is spending more on the water sector, and is also exploring new management mechanisms; but, Matt Perrement reports, planners still seem to find gargantuan development projects more attractive than efficiency gains in the use of existing resources.

China is the world’s number four destination for international tourists, and the most toured country in the world when day trippers and domestic tourists are also counted. National and local governments are keen to promote the industry, but some Chinese observers are beginning to count the environmental and cultural cost. A China Daily article (October 18) reports that visitors to Zhangjiajie, a world heritage site in western Hunan that derives more than 50% of its revenue from tourism, now find little sign of the local Tujia culture, which has been engulfed by modernity. Local residents interviewed in the article lament their loss of tradition and call for preservation of their culture. But a Beijing University professor asserts in the same article that there is no point in preserving architecture and culture. “Cultural preservation has a high cost,” he is quoted as saying. “It's practical to change Zhangjiajie into a modern city, and it's natural for local Tujias to adjust to modern life.”

Officials and businesses on both sides on the Sino-Burmese border are involved in a trail of environmental crime that threatens to wipe out one of the world’s remaining biodiversity hotspots in Burma’s northern Kachin State, according to a report by London-based NGO, Global Witness.

After nearly one year’s informal operation, a Farmers’ Eco-agriculture Development Association in Chongqing Municipality’s Dazu County (大足) has registered as a social organisation with the local Civil Affairs Bureau, and is setting out to promote sustainable livelihoods in a seriously degraded environment.

China Watch an electronic, English language news service that reports on development issues of global significance, was launched late last week by the Washington DC-based Worldwatch Institute.

The American Red Cross is the latest International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies member to arrive in China, establishing an office in Beijing to oversee work in water and sanitation and public health education.

Markets in Tibet and areas of ethnographic Tibet are now an open trading point for tiger and leopard skins that cross the Himalaya from India to provide festive regalia (chubas) for Tibetans celebrating summer festivals and other ceremonial events, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA),

This summer brought disastrous floods across many parts of China – as usual, for the country is both prone and habituated to natural disasters of every kind. Economic losses run at close to one percent of GDP, although loss of life has been progressively reduced by early warning systems and engineering solutions, and disaster prevention efforts now also embrace community and administrative capacity building. However, as Matt Perrement reports, there may be plenty more trouble in store.