UBC Community, Partners, and Alumni Publications

Policy-oriented Macro-analysis : China’s Freshwater & Health Crisis : an Essay on the Techno-industrial Puppetry of Oligarchic Dictatorship Parizeau, Bérangère Maïa Natasha

Abstract

This study on the topic of China’s freshwater and health crisis investigates the nexus of China’s political culture, legislative body, and judiciary, as it relates to environmental protection, policy coordination and enforcement capacity. This synthesis must be understood within the context of China’s pollution of epic proportion, neoliberal market fundamentalism, the possibility of climate collapse, and human extinction. This essay enlightens the ecological and health implications of unsustainable global consumption patterns on China’s population and on a planetary scale. This scholarly essay includes observations on China’s ecological traditions, water management in early Chinese societies, as well as a spell on the dragon mythos ritual-narrative. This analysis unravels the complexity of China’s challenges in light of China’s recent history, political economy, state corporatism, geopolitical reality, emerging judiciary, intensity of the pollution in the context of the urgency of the country’s biodiversity loss, desertification, water scarcity, and serious threats of climate change. This essay offers an overview of the ethical role and responsibility of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as corporate water stewardship within the international trade regulatory system. In addition, the following water management issues are analyzed: lake water eutrophication; groundwater depletion; the North-South water transfer project; the Three Gorges Dam; and the transnational hydro-politics. This investigation applies Dr. Pitman B. Potter’s theoretical approach of ‘Coordinated Compliance’ to the intersection of international trade and environmental protection. Finally, policy recommendations derived from Dr. Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann’s theoretical investigation of international trade law, human rights, and ethics are incorporated into this macro-analysis.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International