environment

Greenpeace China has developed a free iPhone app that aims to raise awareness of GE foods — including rice — and give Chinese consumers an easy way to check whether the products they are buying are GE-free. Entitled "Food Lovers", the free app also features five celebrity food writers discussing their favourite rice dishes.

Modeled after ShopNoGMO, a similar app for US customers released by the Institute for Responsible Technology earlier this year, the reference data used by "Food Lovers" comes from Greenpeace China's 2010 GE-Free Food Guide (link in Chinese). However, the app's title and the inclusion of additional "human interest" content is obviously aimed at increasing its appeal to the general public.

The app is available for free download from the iTunes App Store. One user named "Fansile", awarding it a five-star rating, made this comment:

Finally the environmental organization is talking something related to my Chinese stomach. And it's not only a Green decoration for my iPod touch, but also a practical tool for me to decide what to buy and what to eat. Better than the other green apps. Cheer!

Green Kunming has created a map (link in Chinese) showing signs of pollution and other points of interest along the Panlong River, running through the city of Kunming. Red markers on the map indicate problems, and blue markers indicate other sites including water treatment plants, parks and landmarks. Most include text and photos.

Like other maps mentioned on this blog, this resource was created using Google Maps.

Chinese Environmental NGOs Online is a website offering a host of information about environmental NGOs in China, including an NGO directory (with full-text search, as well as indexes by area of work and province), news and events, job and volunteer announcements, and over 150 electronic documents (link in Chinese) for download.

Most content is in Chinese, although the NGO directory provides English names and contact details for the organizations listed.

The website was established in 2006 by China Development Brief, and began as purely a directory of Chinese environmental NGOs. News and announcements were added to the site the following year. Currently, the website is managed by Friends of Nature, in Beijing.

The China Pollution Map is a grassroots initiative to map reports of pollution in the country. It currently features information and photos for more than 50 incidents of pollution or contamination, derived from media reports and other sources.

The map was created on Google Maps by Fujian-based blogger Guo Baofeng (also known as Peter Guo, or Amoiist), who was inspired by the work of photographer Lu Guang, last month awarded the Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his depictions of pollution in China. Several other people have subsequently contributed to the map (an interesting example of how the collaboration features built into Google Maps allow a map owner to grant other users permission to edit the map).

An article by Radio Free China quotes Guo as saying that after super-imposing this map with the China Cancer Villages Map, a similar project created by another civic-minded blogger, he believes there may be a connection between the two.