Green Hops: Water Forum, Gasoline Price Hikes, Guangdong LED

Editor’s Note:  This edition of Green Hops contains an inexplicably frequent number of references to Guangzhou and Guangdong.  We wonder why that might be…

Water issues continue to dominate China’s environmental agenda thanks to the recent World Water Forum in Turkey.  The forum ended pathetically, failing to recognize water as a basic human right.  But in more positive news, Guangzhou (capital city of southeastern Guangdong province) received the “Compromiso Mexico” water prize, which rewards “the best local public policies that have had a positive impact on the drinking water, sewerage and sanitation services in the communities they interact with.”  According to Xinhua:

Since 1997, the government launched a number of water initiatives, which greatly improved the once heavily polluted inlets of the city’s Pearl River. The government is expected to allocate 48.6 billion yuan (some 7.11 billion U.S. dollars) for water management in 2009 and 2010, which accounts for one third of its financial budget.

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