Yunnan is a microcosm of the intertwined challenges facing China; climate change, strained water resources, and rising energy and food demand to meet the demands of the world’s largest country are together forming a Choke Point that cannot be ignored. In a striking example of one such growing water-energy-food choke point, Yunnan's Nuozhadu Dam on the Mekong River is located in Pu'er, the epicenter of Yunnan's coffee growing boom. Yunnan's looming threats of drought, dams, development, and deforestation are making the need for sustainable water practices, like those in Starbucks' C.A.F.E. Practices, all the more urgent.

The Asian Development Bank, a CEF Partner on Choke Point: Cities, recently released a comprehensive country environmental analysis report on the People's Republic of China. The report highlighted environmental achievements and substantial remaining challenges, while providing analysis on the drivers of environmental stress and recommendations for moving towards an environmentally sustainable future.

China has done an “admirable” job of moving coal-fired power plants out of Beijing, Jennifer Turner tells Voice of America. But “they already had a lot of coal plants, and they have been building more.”

Shale gas development promises to help resolve the confrontation between rising demand for energy and declining freshwater reserves, along with other potentially huge benefits, not the least of which is to the environment. But of all the big national projects that China has taken on in the last two decades, adding unconventional domestic sources of natural gas to the fuel supply has eluded China.