Beicology: How Beijing Broke Ground on Combating China's Soil Pollution Problem

How bad is the smog these days, really? Who is keeping tabs on the state of our drinking water? What has the government done about carbon emissions lately? In Beicology, we turn our focus toward environmental news in the capital. 

Despite Beijing’s smog garnering plenty of bad press over the years, the Chinese capital is actually ahead of the curve when it comes to a more pressing form of pollution. At least that’s the conclusion reached in a new study by Nanjing University and environmental NGO Greenpeace East Asia after digging into China’s soil pollution problem.

The study, which is the first of its kind conducted in China, was headed by Bao Hang, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia in Beijing. He says heavy metals (proven to cause forms of cancer, among other health issues) make up the bulk of the toxins in numerous plots of land across the country, and that a giant 41 percent of those polluted plots were once occupied by chemical plants. Bao goes on to tell the Beijinger: "We think it’s serious because it takes a lot of money to fix this issue. Also, soil pollution is not so visible to the general public, compared to smog, meaning it gets less attention and officials have less pressure to deal with it."

The steep costs related to solving the problem are largely due to the complex technology required to target chemical substances in the soil, according to Bao. He adds: "You need one type of tech to deal with this chemical, and then another toxic substance will need to be solved with another form of technology. So it's hard to solve." The issue is also compounded whenever these pollutants seep down into groundwater. "Then you have to dig very deep and control the movement of groundwater, so the contaminated water doesn't flow elsewhere and spread the pollution. Dealing with that is also very expensive."

Worrisome as the issue may be, Bao says that positive signs are surfacing from China's capital despite its far from clean reputation as a city. "Beijing’s situation is different," says Bao. "It began to reform earlier and faster than other cities, so a lot of its chemical and steel plants already moved away long ago."

READ: Beijing Not Even in Top 100 Most Polluted Cities in the World

Indeed, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shanghai all had the highest number of contaminated plots: 21, 17, and 14, respectively. "Also, in our report, you can see Beijing is doing well in managing polluted sites, in terms of transparency and having much stricter regulations. So I think it is a much different situation."

While Bao can't say for sure why Beijing tackled the problem earlier, and why it is showing more transparency than other locales, he has some theories. For one, the capital was struck by an environmental scandal back in 2004, when construction workers in the then-burgeoning subway system were harmed by underground contaminants. According to Bao, the ensuing bad press prompted Beijing to "strengthen its regulations in the redevelopment of polluted sites, and officials in the capital accumulated a lot of experience managing soil pollution as a result."

Bao also points to the added foreign media scrutiny of Beijing (as China's capital), the number of expats living here, and the increased overall consciousness about pollution because of locals' routine contention with smog over the years, all as motivating officials to literally clean up their act when it comes to soil contaminants. "Citizens here are more aware, and can generate pressure for the government to do more," Bao says.

Bao hopes that other Chinese cities can follow Beijing's lead in rooting out soil pollution. The matter strikes a personal chord with him because, despite spending much of his career in Beijing, he hails from Guizhou, one of China's biggest provincial soil polluters.

"This work is gratifying because I feel this issue lacks public attention. Many of my friends and family didn't know that where they live might have once been a chemical plant," Bao says. "Though I can't help solve the problem immediately, I hope to raise awareness and help people begin to pay attention to this kind issue."

You can read Bao's full study for Greenpeace here.

READ: Meet the French Restaurateur Rooting Out the Potential of Beijing's Soil

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Photos: Reuters (via Quartz), SCMP, straitstimes.com