Ma Jun An interactive map to track and end pollution in China TED
Choking smog, polluted waters,
climate change.
This has been the environmental cost
of the tremendous growth in China
over the past 40 years.
At the same time,
hundreds of millions of people
have put themselves out of poverty.
As an environmentalist in China,
I have witnessed all of this firsthand.
The challenge we’re facing is:
Can we clean up as fast and as broadly
as the massive development
degrading our air, water and climate?
China has one point four billion people,
still a fast-growing economy,
and is responsible for the biggest share
of the current greenhouse gas emissions.
China knows its global responsibility
and has pledged
to be carbon-neutral by 2060.
It means more than 10 billion metric tons
of carbon emissions
must be stopped or be neutralized.
How can we possibly do it?
The pressing global climate situation
requires each of us not just to do it,
but to do it faster.
I believe there’s a chance
for us to succeed,
as I know a tool
that I have seen worked to help reduce
the enormous environmental pollution.
It is the power of transparency,
pollution information made public using
mobile internet and other IT technologies
may empower millions of citizens
to speed change
by holding corporations
and government agencies accountable.
I personally got involved
in the transparency drive
for water pollution control.
Years ago, beside Lake Tai,
the third largest freshwater
lake in China,
I saw a group of fishermen using long
ladles to scoop out the algae bloom.
One fisherman said to me,
“When I was young, on a hot day like this,
I would have jumped
into the lake for a [swim].”
“But now,” he said, “the fish are gone
and we’re paid to scoop out the algae.”
Pointing to those factories
not far from the shoreline,
he said the lake would not be clean
until they stop dumping.
Years of research made me understand
how hard it is to check the dumping.
With weak enforcement,
the cost of violations was often too low,
and those who cut corners
became more competitive in the market.
This region happens to be
one of the biggest centers
of the global supply chain
for electronic gadgets and for clothes.
But those multinational
brands sourcing locally
were not very helpful at the beginning.
Many would argue, “In China,
I don’t know who is polluting,
so I would buy from the cheapest.”
This is going to add further pressure
on those local suppliers
to race down to the bottom
for their contracts.
But I told them I have a map
that can help them figure out
who is polluting.
From 2006,
we began to compile
corporate monitoring data
data into a database
known as the Blue Map.
We started with only two thousand
records of violations,
but through years of promotion
of enforcement and transparency,
that number has topped two million.
The missing dots
in the global supply chain’s
environmental management
began to be connected when a
group of [electronic] and textile brands
started comparing their list of suppliers
with our list of violators.
Let me explain how it works.
This is the Blue Map
for the Yangtze River Delta,
which covers the Lake Tai region.
Each individual factory –
and there are tens of thousands of them –
is color coded.
Blue and green for “good,”
red and yellow for “bad.”
The color codes are derived
from the violations on record
and the confirmed public reporting.
And we have put more
than four million of such dots
on the digital map,
all color coded.
Still, how can a map make change?
This is one of the largest
dyehouse suppliers.
It used to have multiple
violation records,
but insisted if they treat the waste
but not their neighbors’,
they would lose their business.
But then five brands, starting from Gap,
all told this company
it would lose their business
if it would not treat the waste properly.
Realizing that the sourcing
code has changed,
the company spent millions of dollars
to bring more than 12 million metric tons
of textile wastewater
contaminated by dyes and chemicals
up to standards,
and then made further investments
to cut the volume of wastewater.
We did the same thing,
along with our local partners,
such as Green Jiangnan,
with the electronic industry suppliers
that manufacture parts for Apple, Dell,
Huawei and other major brands.
Here is one of the largest
[electronic] suppliers,
dredging the local canal to remove
the heavy metals dumped in it.
Victories like this build upon each other
to enable the supply chain management
to reach further upstream
through the supply chain,
from garment factories to fabric mills
to dyehouses to the dye manufacturers.
Today, the color codes
can mean the difference
between a company that secures a loan
from a major bank,
like the Postal Bank of China,
and one that does not.
The application of the Blue Map data,
in green supply chain and green finance,
has motivated more
than fourteen thousand companies
to address their violations
or make disclosure.
The scope of environmental transparency
got further extended in China
during its epic fighting
against the severe smog,
which used to expose hundreds
of millions of people to health hazards.
In response to the public
demand for disclosure,
corporate online monitoring data were made
open every hour or every two hours.
The first of its kind in the world.
At the same time, people were acquiring
cell phones across China,
so we developed a cell phone app
to enable people to access the air
and water quality data.
But the most unique function
of the Blue Map app
is for our users to access
the records of emitters,
then share through social media,
tagging the official account.
Such kind of a microreporting
has motivated some of the largest
emitters to change behavior.
This is one of them,
a listed steel plant which used to breach
the standards repeatedly.
The microreporting filed by the local
Blue Map users and NGOs
has got a local agency to weigh in
and require this company to clean up.
Eventually, the steel plant spent
more than one billion dollars
to make a very deep cut
in its air emissions,
a contribution to the significant
improvement of air quality
in a vast airshed,
which includes my city, Beijing.
Despite all the successes,
I have to acknowledge our mission
is far from being accomplished.
There are still more than two million
records of violations in the Blue Map.
Today, we face massive tension
between environmental protection
and economic recovery,
brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic
as well as the looming
climate catastrophe.
There’s a strong temptation,
In local regions and cities,
to relax environmental regulations,
which has resulted already in a rather
big rebound of the carbon emissions.
So China’s 2060 carbon neutrality pledge
came at a critical moment.
But the implementation of it
wouldn’t be easy.
Remember the steel plant that already
spent one billion dollars to clean up?
Now the new task is for us
to review with it how to tackle
the 10 million metric tons
of carbon emission.
And this is just zero point one percent
of the carbon emissions that we need
to stop or neutralize in China.
Again, we must tap
into the power of transparency.
My team and I have launched
a Blue Map for Zero Carbon,
a database that needs to bring
China’s long-term national commitment
down to where that 10 billion tons
of carbon are actually emitted.
This is how a zero-carbon map looks like.
Each province and city is color-coded
based on its level of emission.
With trend analysis,
tracking when and at what level
the carbon will peak and stop growing.
As you can see, the cities of Beijing,
Shanghai, are on track,
while others like Tangshan, like Yinchuan,
still have a long way to go.
To generate peer pressure and incentives,
we’re working with our partner,
the Chinese Academy
of Environmental Science,
in assessing the local climate ambition,
performance and carbon-decoupling
trends of major provinces,
cities and energy
and raw-material companies.
One clear gap we identified
is the lack of capacity
in measuring and reporting.
Along with other partners,
we developed a digital carbon
accounting platform.
So far, more than five thousand companies
have been motivated by brands and banks
to calculate and report
their carbon emissions or local emissions.
But my dream is to empower
millions of more businesses,
to measure and to report
and to reduce their emissions.
Bear in mind many of them
are part of this global supply chain.
If you know the product you consume
day in and day out,
often has 70 percent or more,
and sometimes to up to 90 percent,
of their carbon footprint
in the supply chain,
would you join our efforts
in motivating the big brands
and banks and investors
to green their global sourcing
and investment?
And it’s not just carbon.
Today, we further expand the Blue Map
to cover waste and plastics
and even biodiversity
so as to empower more people to join
this unprecedented global race to zero.
The prize for winning this ongoing race
is nothing less than a better world
for this generation
and for the generations to come.
For mankind and for all
the plants and animals
that call this planet their home.
Thank you.