The big environmental stories in the Chinese media (14-20 May)
In the latest round of environmental inspection, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) slammed a large state-owned company for killing over 37,000 mangrove trees during port construction in southern Guangxi province.
The company's two subsidiaries had already received a warning in 2016. According to the MEE, the company had ignored the warning when constructing its new ports in the Beibu Gulf (Gulf of Tonkin) over the past few years.
The MEE found the company had discharged wastewater containing high concentrations of kaolinite, a clay mineral, into the sea. A large number of mangroves, which grow along the shoreline, were killed after the clay coated the plants’ roots.
On Monday, the company announced that they would make plans to rectify the wrongdoings with a "zero tolerance" attitude. Measures include artificially induced rainfall to wash away the kaolinite and restore the mangrove.
Mangroves cover about 50,000 hectares across southern China. However, the country lost almost half of these over the period 1950-2000 due to land reclamation and port construction. The Chinese government only started protecting and restoring the mangroves after 2001, with 7,000 hectares of mangroves revived in the past decade.
Last year, the Chinese government introduced a five-year plan to protect mangroves. The program aims to restore over 9,000 hectares of mangroves and plant another 9,000 hectares by 2025.
(Sources: China Dialogue)
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