The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors Friday approved a grant of US$4.788 million from the Global Environment Facility to the People's Republic of China to help reduce the rural and agricultural pollution to the East China Sea.

The GEF grant will be used in combination with US$29.891 million from the recipient to develop activities that demonstrate effective and innovative pollution reduction in Shanghai's selected rural areas.

Shanghai has been suffering from water pollution casued by nitrogen, phosphorus, and other organic matters discharged to watercourses from the agriculture and livestock sector. Specifically the Shanghai Agricultural and Non-point Pollution Reduction Project will support:

(i) comprehensive management of livestock wastes;

(ii) rural wetland sewage treatment systems; and

(iii) reduction in the use of chemical fertilizer and chemical pesticides.

The project will pilot appropriate pollution management technologies available in China and internationally, seeking overall cost-effective approaches and options. The project would serve as a demonstration of the approaches and technologies applied. In addition, the project will seek to strengthen dissemination of information and to provide training within the agricultural communities in the project areas.

"We want to design the activities in such a way that they would be readily suitable for replication elsewhere in Shanghai, China and beyond," said Mr. Takuya Kamata, the World Bank's task team leader for the project. "The dissemination and replication of these activities on a large scale in future is expected to contribute to water quality improvement in the East China Sea."

Established in 1991, the GEF is today the largest funder of projects to improve the global environment. It provides grants to developing countries and countries in transition for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants.

(China Development Gateway June 11, 2010)