The 2010 Annual Report on China's Environment: Friends of Nature's China Green Book

Last Friday, Beijing-based NGO Friends of Nature (En) released its Annual Report on China’s Environment and Development 2010, a collection of articles from some of China’s top environmental groups, legal and environmental scholars, and journalists.  FON has published an annual Green Book since 2006 and this has become the definitive account of the top issues in environmental protection each year since. The “2010 Green Book” includes a chronology of major environmental incidents and events in 2009, as well as 27 articles on environmental health, the handling of municipal waste, sustainable consumption, pollution, ecological protection, and environmental policy.

As one commentary notes (translation), China has “entered a period where environmental incidents are a regular occurrence.” Yang Dongping, chairman of FON and chief editor of the Green Book, said that the spate of “pollution incidents” (heavy metal poisonings and such) in 2009 was not unexpected, but rather is the natural result of accumulated environmental pollution and degradation over 30 years of rapid economic development (translation).  A few points raised in the Green Book and at last week’s press conference are worth noting:

• Inadequate funding and resources. This is one of the biggest challenges in the fight for a better environment in China. Currently, environmental protection receives about 1.4% of China’s GDP; the Green Book suggests that this figure be increased to 2%.
• Environmental health. Inadequate attention has been paid to the adverse health impacts of China’s environmental situation.  FON and experts featured in the Green Book call for more research, public awareness and action to reduce health risks from environmental pollution.  We could not agree more.
• Public interest litigation and environmental courts. The past year saw major developments in environmental public interest litigation (translation) with the acceptance of the first two public interest cases filed by the All-China Environmental Federation. We have written about these cases here (Chinese) and here.  My colleague Gao Jie has written an article in the People’s Court Daily concerning China’s environmental courts (here).
• Legal developments. Last year’s Regulation on Plan Environmental Impact Assessment was one of the most important environmental legal authorities passed last year. Nonetheless, it still suffers from major deficiencies (translation), including insufficient public participation and access to environmental information, and insufficient oversight from environmental authorities, that need to be strengthened.
• Water shortages. Beijing suffers severely from water-shortages, yet the use of water by luxury saunas alone swallows up 81.6 million tons of water every year – equivalent to the volume of 41 Kunming Lakes (translation).
• Waste incinerators and waste disposal. China has reached a crossroads in its management of municipal solid waste (translation) – a flurry of protests regarding waste incineration in 2009 indicates that central and local governments must place a stronger emphasis on developing effective waste management policies that do not simply move waste to rural areas. Aggressive programs to reduce and recycle waste can provide major relief to the problem of waste disposal, yet very few cities in China have moved in this direction.
• Transparency and open information. The Green Book included an article written by the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) and NRDC detailing the initial results of the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI), an evaluation of environmental transparency in 113 Chinese cities.
• “Greening” the economic stimulus. My colleague Barbara Finamore and I contributed an article to the Green Book regarding the importance of building environmental protection into the economic stimulus plans in both China and the US.

We congratulate FON on the release of the Green Book this year. The issues raised in the Green Book could not be more important.