ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: Socio-Economic Changes Influence Land Use

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Senthil Ratnasabapathy

VIENNA, Mar 28 1996 (IPS) - Changing demographic, industrial and consumption patterns in China will pose a major challenge to policy makers in Beijing in the coming years, according to an international think tank here.

The International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) says factors ranging from increasing population to a shift in food consumption patterns have already changed the Chinese landscape and will continue to put a stress on the environment.

“These changes will change the land cover and use in China, but given China’s size (in terms of population and area) will also have effects on regional and perhaps even on a global level,” says Guenther Fischer, head of a IIASA project on land use in China.

An increase of electricity use to near the western standard of living, for instance, would having a tremendous impact on global warming as China still uses fossil fuels, particularly coal, for most of its power generation.

The project, carried out by an international group of scientists including experts from China, focuses on land use and land cover changes in Europe and Northern Asia — the last covering China, Russia and Mongolia. But since population and socio-economic trends have an influence on land, they too are being studied, said Fischer.

The IIASA is a non governmental research organisation sponsored by mainly academies of sciences in 17 countries, mostly located in the industrialised world.

One of the main focuses of the project would be to come up with a model which then could be applied to predict more accurately future trends regarding land use and change in land cover.

According to Fischer, there has been an increase in mean climate temperatures in northern China, but a decline in mean temperature in central China. The project group — aided by a Chinese record keeping system dating back 500 years — is trying to ascertain whether the demographic and socio-economic changes in the recent past have played any role in these shifts.

Although no final conclusions have been reached, IIASA officials say current available data indicates that rural-urban migration and the growth of industrial sector will be the dominant factor influencing future land use.

China has followed a successful birth control programme and current fertility rates, the average number of children born to each woman of childbearing age, is very low at 1.8. Nevertheless U.N. agencies expect there would be 400 million more people in China by year 2050, bringing the total population to 1.6 billion.

This would mean, says Fischer, China will have to find food and other basic amenities for an extra number of people, equivalent to the current population of the European Union.

A second factor is the fast growing economy of China, probably the fastest growing in the world. The U.N. Industrial Development Organisation says the gross domestic product (GDP) of China grew by an astonishing nine percent last year, while the world’s as a whole grew by 2.9 percent.

Simultaneously, there has also been a change within the economic sphere in China, Fischer says. Whereas the agricultural sector constituted more than a third of the gross national product (GNP) in 1980, it declined to just under 20 percent in 1993.

At the same time, the proportion of the industrial sector grew from 41 percent to 47 percent and that of the services sector from 25 percent to a third of the national GNP during the same period, says IIASA.

The population increase and the shift in the economic sector would mean China will have to build more power stations, more houses and other buildings and more roads.

Just one example as to the extent of demand is the growth of the automobile industry. An estimated 1.5 million cars are produced currently and this is expected to increase to three million in four years time and then to four million cars per year by year 2010.

At the same time, the total area of paved area has tripled between 1980 and 1993, IIASA says.

Almost three fourths of the Chinese population is still regarded as ‘rural’, but the IIASA says this will certainly change over the coming years as the rural population move towards urban areas in search of jobs and better educational and health facilities.

One indication as to the re-distribution is the fact that the total population of 51 most favoured Chinese cities has increased from 39 million 1950 to 134 million by last year.

The capital Beijing, which had a population of 3.9 million in 1950 has now 12.3 million people and it is expected to rise to 19 million by year 2015.

The area hardest hit by migration to urban areas would be eastern China, particularly along the coast, where already large parts of the population is concentrated. According to IIASA half of the present population lives on just 13 percent of the land making certain areas among the world’s most densely populated.

One thing that is certain to play a major role in changing the landscape is the changing life styles and how the policy makers react — whether they encourage, discourage or turn a blind eye to it, Fischer said.

“If only a fraction of the 1.6 billion projected Chinese consumers in 2050 will prefer a more ‘western style’ diet, the impacts on the worldwide sugar and meat demand will be significant,” he said, as an example.

Researchers have already noticed a changed in food styles of Chinese — a shift from the traditional cereal based to animal based foods and the IIASA says an increase of urbanisation and the per capital income levels will accelerate this trend.

Yet, with an average per capita meat consumption of 30 kilogrammes per capita, China still is far behind the industrialised countries where the average per capita meat consumption is 2.5 times more.

According to U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation statistics, China was the worlds largest meat producer in 1994 — it produced roughly a fifth of the world meat production of 194,000 million tonnes that year.

One major problem faced by many countries, particularly China, is that natural resources, including land and water, do not keep pace with their population and other trends.

Thus China, which has increased its soy bean production meant for animal feed by 50 percent in recent years, will have to intensify the exploitation of existing land.

“It means more fertiliser will be used which in turn will affect the soil composure,” Fischer said. “The fertilisers also have reactive nitrogen molecules which contribute to the greenhouse effect.”