Documentary Description
China is trying to feed 20 percent of the world’s population on 7
percent of the world’s arable land. A third of the world uses water
from China’s rivers. But rapid industrialization and climate change
have led to bad air, polluted rivers and drought. Environmental
activists, Party officials, academics and scientists are in a daily
struggle over the damage to nature in China.
Environmental campaigner Huo Daishan has been trying to save the
heavily polluted Huai River, which provides water for 150 million
people. Research took him to its main tributary, the Shaying, into
which over a million tons of raw human sewage and untreated waste water
are dumped daily. Rather than clamping down on polluters, local
government protects local industries.
Along the Huai’s main tributary, 50,000 people suffer from cancer.
In one village alone, 118 people have died. The Deputy Minister of the
Environment accepts that many cancer cases are related to environmental
pollution, but says he is powerless to shut down polluting companies.
Other stories explore northern China’s dire water shortage, which is
being remedied by channelling water from the south in what will be the
biggest hydraulic project in world history. A project in the arid
Ningxia region has benefited nearly half a million people, but
elsewhere relocation from dam areas, like the Three Gorges, is causing
huge social upheaval.
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