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Self-Motivated versus Forced Disclosure of Environmental Information in China: A Comparative Case Study of the Pilot Disclosure Programmes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2011

Wanxin Li
Wanxin Li
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

China promulgated the Open Government Information Decree and Measures of Environmental Information Disclosure (Trial) in 2007, but the Pollution Information Transparency Index revealed the poor implementation of disclosing environmental information in 113 cities in 2008. Adopting a comparative case study approach, this article uses a combination of the “cultural roots” and “webs of dialogue” analytical frameworks to analyse the pilot environmental information disclosure programmes in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, and Hohhot, Inner Mongolia from 1999 to 2000. It finds that when the programme was top-down, the commitment, perception and resources of leadership determined its success and nondisclosure did not receive any public attention. However, when environmental NGOs are actively engaged, pressure can be from the bottom up, webs of dialogue can be established, and the public can be empowered to seek and use environmental information actively in development decision-making and redressing pollution harms.

Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 206 , June 2011 , pp. 331 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2011

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References

1 The World Bank and SEPA reported the following conservative estimates in their coauthored 2007 report “Cost of pollution in China: economic estimates of physical damages.” The economic burden of premature mortality and morbidity associated with air pollution was 157.3 billion yuan in 2003, or 1.16% of GDP. The overall cost of water scarcity associated with water pollution was 147 billion yuan, or about 1% of GDP. Irrigation with polluted water costs 7 billion yuan per year. The cost to fisheries was 4 billion yuan. And China's poor are disproportionately affected by environmental health burdens. Also, there have been serious pollution cases. In 2007, because of the water pollution in Tai Lake, residents in Wuxi city lost access to piped water for seven days. In August 2009, Hunan province and Shaanxi province identified thousands of children living near chemical plants with blood lead levels exceeding standards.

2 According to neo-institutionalism theories, the party which owns the residual property rights (not explicitly stated in contracts) should have the control on information and decision-making. Graham, Mary, Democracy by Disclosure: The Rise of Technopopulism (Washington, DC: Governance Institute/Brookings Institution Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Magat, Wesley A. and Viscusi, W. Kip, Informational Approaches to Regulation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Thomas H. Tietenberg and David Wheeler, “Empowering the community: information strategies for pollution control,” paper delivered at Frontiers of Environmental Economics Conference, Airlie House, Virginia, 1998; and Williamson, Oliver E., The Mechanisms of Governance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

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6 “Zhonghua renmin gongheguo zhengfu xinxi gongkai tiaoli” (“Open government information decree”), State Council Decree No. 492, came into effect on 1 May 2008.

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12 After graduating from Nanjing University in 1983, Wang Hua joined other faculty members to establish the School of Environment at Nanjing University. In 1991, he came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to work on his PhD in environmental policy, concentrating on environmental economics, receiving his doctorate in 1997. He joined the World Bank as a summer intern in 1993. He worked in the Infrastructure and Environment Unit of the Development Research Group and became a senior economist in 2003. Wang is also ambitious to generate real changes in developing countries, especially China. In 1995, the unit first experimented in Indonesia with colour rating the environmental performance of industrial enterprises and publicizing the rating results. The project – PROPER – has been evaluated as successful.

13 PROPER is a World Bank research project in collaboration with Indonesia's Environmental Impact and Management Agency. It was to overcome pervasive institutional barriers to environmental enforcement. The idea was to “create incentives for compliance through honour and shame.” PROPER was stopped after 1997 because of the Asian financial crisis and political instability in Indonesia.

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15 Interview 09162005-01.

16 CRAES and HRAES, “Working report on environmental information disclosure in Hohhot” (Hohhot: Hohhot Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, 2000). p. 1.

17 Ibid.

18 Interview 09162005-01.

19 SEPA Circular No. 125 (2005).

20 Interview 06092005-02.

21 Phone call with interviewee 07152005-01, the designer and implementer of the pilot environmental information disclosure programme in Hohhot, on 12 July 2005.

22 Li, Wanxin and Zusman, Eric, “Translating regulatory promise into environmental progress: institutional capacity and environmental regulation in China,” Environmental Law Reporter: News and Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 8 (2006), pp. 10616–23Google Scholar.

23 Acccording to the School of Environment of Nanjing University, the total budget of Zhenjiang EPB was 2,526,830 yuan in 1999 and 5,000,000 yuan in 2004.

24 Interview 07172005-01.

25 Interview 07172005-01; obtained from School of Environment of Nanjing University.

26 Interview 06092005-01.

27 Interview 06092005-01. More and more pollution cases reported in the mass media have shown the argument by Director Chu to be correct.

28 Interviews 06092005-01, 06092005-02. Government agencies and officials which are critical to adopting EPID include Jiangsu provincial EPB, Zhenjiang city government, deputy mayor in charge of industry, deputy mayor in charge of environment, people's congress, economic commission, industrial bureau, legal office, and commission on urban and rural development.

29 Interview 06092005-01.

30 Interviews 06092005-01, 06092005-02.

31 Interview 06092005-01.

32 Wang, Cao, Wang and Lu, Environmental Information Disclosure, p. 187. Interviews 11242004-01, 06092005-02.

33 Interviews 06092005-01, 06092005-02.

34 Interviews 06092005-01, 06092005-02.

35 Interviews 06212005-02, 06212005-02, 07152005-01.

36 Interview with Cao Dong and Wang Jinnan of the CRAES, and Fan Yongying of the HRAES.

37 Interview 06212005-02.

38 Interview with Fan Yongying of the HRAES and Yang Yingfeng of the Hohhot EPB.

39 Zhenjiang City Government Directive on Implementing Environmental Information Disclosure of Industrial Enterprises in Zhenjiang, Zhenjiang city government [2000]94.

40 By 1999, when Zhenjiang started experimenting with environmental information disclosure, Chu and Qu had worked together for the Zhenjiang EPB for 19 years. This gave them the competency and good working relationships within the Zhenjiang EPB, and with other relevant government agencies in Zhenjiang and the Jiangsu provincial EPB.

41 Ho, Peter and Edmonds, Richard L., China's Embedded Activism: Opportunities and Constraints of a Social Movement (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 3Google Scholar.

42 Wang, Cao, Wang and Lu, Environmental Information Disclosure, p. 173.

43 Interview 06082005-03.

44 Yang, Goubin and Calhoun, Craig, “Media, civil society, and the rise of a green public sphere in China,” China Information, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2007), pp. 211–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sullivan, Jonathan and Xie, Lei, “Environmental activism, social networks and the internet,” The China Quarterly, No. 198 (2009), pp. 422–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 On 3 June 2009, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing and the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York posted their first PITI on the internet. See “Raising the standards.”

46 In societies such as the US, upon receiving environmental information, citizens can take private or legal action against direct harm or violations by specific polluters or complain to public authorities. To encourage citizen suits, the attorney fee can be recovered by the government for successful or partially successful claims. Thus, an enabling approach can be adopted by government to facilitate webs of dialogues on pollution prevention and control. See Bowman, Margaret, “The role of the citizen in environmental enforcement,” Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Program for Central and Eastern Europe (Washington, DC, 1992)Google Scholar.