China's pearls bring jewellery to the masses - but pollution to its waters

The prices of the lustrous strings of pearls that line display cases in Shanghai jewellery stores are more eye-catching than the glossy gems: some pearl sets cost less than 10 yuan (R11) even before bargaining.

"All kinds of people come to buy pearls - Chinese and foreigners," said Wang Caijiao, who has been selling them in a two-storey shop on Shanghai's bustling Nanjing Road for seven years.

The massive volume of freshwater pearls on the market have made the gem affordable to the masses.

That might be good news for the migrant labourers and factory workers who can now afford pearls, but it's bad news for the pearl industry, which frets over the sinking prices of pearls and the damage to the gem's once exclusive image.

Now Chinese local governments, concerned about environmental damage to lakes and reservoirs from pearl cultivation, are beginning to rein in production.

And what's healthy for the environment may be healthy for the industry as well.

"The pearl industry has not been doing well in the past two years because the output is too high," said Li Jiale, a professor at Shanghai Ocean University.

"The industry needs to reduce quantity and improve quality."

Pearl farms now earned less than 2 000 yuan per kilogram of pearls, down from a peak above 20 000 yuan more than a decade ago, Li said.

Last year, China produced 1 600 tons of pearls, more than 95 percent of the world's total output, the Gems and Jewellery Trade Association of China says on its website.

Most are rough-edged, elongated orbs like those threaded into necklaces in Wang's shop. Perfectly shaped salt water pearls that are formed by nature can fetch millions of dollars.

The massive quantities of pearls produced by China's pearl industry carry a hefty environmental cost.

Cloudy lakes

Lake waters where the pearls are cultivated are greenish, cloudy and often foul-smelling from a mixture of pollution and fertilisers dumped into the water to help the mussels produce pearls more quickly.

"The disorderly growth of freshwater pearl cultivation in some regions, resulting in the dumping of large quantities of fertiliser into lakes and reservoirs, has seriously damaged those water bodies," says a document on the website of the agriculture department of Hubei province.

Hubei, one of China's biggest pearl producers, last year banned pearl cultivation in lakes and reservoirs, and restricted pearl-producing mussels to ponds.

Several cities and regions in southern China have also banned or restricted pearl cultivation in recent years.

But experts said mussels, used to produce the gems in fresh water (while oysters produce pearls in saltwater), should not pollute the environment if raised properly.

"Mussels eat plankton in the water and can therefore actually purify it," said Pan Jianlin, the secretary-general of the Jiangsu Province Pearl Industry Association.

"But some farmers are not raising pearls properly. They use fertiliser to feed the plankton," he said.

Overly dense mussel populations compounded the pollution, experts said.

"If mussels are raised in an enclosed body of water, it can easily lead to eutriphication ," said Cheng Wen, a professor at Xi'an University of Science and Technology.

Less is more

Environmental damage from pearl culture is minor compared with the industrial emissions, heavy fertiliser run-off and untreated sewage that have fouled many Chinese rivers and lakes over three decades of breakneck economic growth.

Local governments are now under pressure to attack all sources of pollution.

Hit by the restrictions as well as rising costs and falling prices, China's pearl output was expected to fall to 1 400 tons this year and 1 000 tons by 2010, down more than one-third from last year, said the Gems and Jewellery Trade Association of China.

Lower production might not hit profits.

Experience in other pearl producing regions has shown that producing smaller quantities of a higher quality can bring better returns for the industry as a whole.

"It's important that pearl farmers know that producing 100kg of pearls is not more profitable than producing 20kg," said Qiu Zhili, an associate professor of earth sciences at Sun Yat-sen University.

In French Polynesia, where Tahitian pearls are cultivated, the local industry association compiles output plans and strictly regulates market access. Pearls that do not meet gem grade standards could not be sold as jewellery, Qiu said.

The quality of China's freshwater pearls is starting to improve and, if cultivated properly, with lower densities in ponds and longer cultivation times, experts said they could look more like the smooth, perfectly round saltwater pearls from Japan and the South Pacific that command far higher prices.

But that is not likely to happen either quickly or easily.

"I'd like to see output fall to 100 tons," said Du Kunlin, the secretary-general of Zhejiang Province Pearl Industry Association. "Then our pearls would be priced at the same levels as Tahitian pearls and South Sea pearls. That would be great."

But he added: "Tens of thousands of pearl farmers live off them. You can't just let only 10 000 of them survive."