Yellow River – National Geographic Magazine<\/p>\n
http:\/\/ngm.nationalgeographic.com\/2008\/05\/china\/yellow-river\/larmer<\/p>\n
“What are you doing?” the security guard demands. “Nothing,” replies the stocky woman lurking outside the gates of the paper mill, tucking her secret weapon\u2014a handheld global positioning device\u2014under her sweater. The guard eyes her for a minute, and the woman, a 51-year-old laid-off factory worker named Jiang Lin, holds her breath. When he turns away, she pulls out the GPS and quickly locks in the paper mill’s coordinates.
\nAs an employee of Green Camel Bell, an environmental group in the western city of Lanzhou, Jiang is following up on a tip that the mill is dumping untreated chemical waste into a tributary of the Yellow River. There are hundreds of such factories around Lanzhou, a former Silk Road trading post that has morphed into a petrochemical hub. In 2006 three industrial spills here
\nmade the Yellow River run red. Another turned it white. This one is tainting the tributary a
\ntoxic shade of maroon. When Jiang gets back to the office, the GPS data will be emailed to
\nBeijing and uploaded onto a Web-based “pollution map” for the whole world to see.
\nFor all of Lanzhou’s pride in being the first and biggest city along the Yellow River, it is better
\nknown for its massive discharge of industrial and human waste. But even here there is afor the river’s salvation. In the mid-1990s a mere handful of environmental groups existed in
\nChina. Today there are several thousand, including Green Camel Bell. Jiang Lin’s 25-year-old
\nson, Zhao Zhong, founded the group in 2004 to help clean up the city and protect the Yellow
\nRiver. With only five paid staff, Green Camel Bell is a shoestring operation kept afloat by
\ngrants from an American NGO, Pacific Environment. The name they chose, after the
\nreassuring bells worn by camels in Silk Road caravans, is meant to be “a sign of life,” says
\nJiang. “The bell is supposed to give hope to everyone who hears it.”
\nAt long last Beijing appears willing to listen. After three decades blindly pursuing growth, the
\ngovernment is starting to grapple with the environmental costs. The impact is not simply
\nmonetary, though the World Bank calculates that environmental damage robs China of 5.8
\npercent of its GDP each year. It is also social: Irate citizens last year flooded the government
\nwith hundreds of thousands of official environmental complaints. Whether to save the
\nenvironment or stave off social unrest, Beijing has adopted ambitious goals, aiming for a 30
\npercent reduction in water consumption and a 10 percent decrease in pollution discharges by
\n2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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