Wanxin Li

Getting their voices heard: three cases of public participation in environmental protection in China.

By comparing three cases of environmental activism in China, our paper answers the following three questions about public participation in environment protection in China: (1) what are the drivers for public participation, (2) who are the agents leading the participation, and (3) do existing laws facilitate public participation? We find heightened public awareness of environmental degradation and increasing anxieties over health and property values drive people to fight for more political space to influence decisions that have an impact on the environment. Despite the promises one finds in the letter of Chinese laws, Chinese society lacks a meaningful institutional framework to allow public participation, even in the area of environmental protection. The Chinese government mainly passively responds to public demands on an ad hoc basis, with no institutional commitment for engaging the public on environmental issues. This is unfortunate, because public policies without adequate public input are doomed to be clouded by illegitimacy.

Small but effective moves towards a greener China

SIR — Further to your Editorial ‘Animal farm: pig in the middle’ (Nature 459, 889; 2009), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) would like to clarify what is understood so far about how animals are associated with the human influenza A/H1N1 pandemic. Although the human H1N1 virus contains gene sequences that have been identified in influenza viruses from swine, these are not present in exactly the same combination. The OIE has encouraged its members to intensify surveillance of pigs for infection, but there has been no evidence so far that swine are playing any role in the epidemiology or in the worldwide spread of the virus in the human population. It is likely that we shall never know the specific origin of this pandemic virus. As you mention, the OIE has campaigned against calling the human disease ‘swine flu’. Although the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the OIE have since agreed officially to rename the virus ‘pandemic (H1N1) 2009’, common use of the misleading term ‘swine flu’ is in danger of continuing. This initially prompted several countries to ban import of pigs and pig products or to destroy all their pig populations, without any benefit to public or animal health. It could cause further economic harm, in the same way that the H5N1 ‘avian flu’ crisis of 2004 unnecessarily triggered a drop in people’s consumption of poultry products. Such an unjustified disruption of trade would affect small farmers and animal producers around the world, more than a billion of whom are already living in poverty. In 2005, the FAO and OIE set up a joint network of expertise on animal influenza. The network, OFFLU, was created to help the WHO obtain rapid access to circulating animal viruses for the early preparation of human vaccines. After the emergence of the pandemic virus in humans, OFFLU called for laboratories worldwide to aid public health by publicly sharing gene sequences of influenza virus identified in swine. As a result, it is proposed to expand the current OIE reference laboratories for avian influenza to cover all animal influenza viruses and to increase research on the behaviour of these viruses at the human–animal interface. The OIE will continue to advise its members and the public on the control of potential zoonotic diseases, for example Helping young scientists to speak for themselves

Controlling Local Environmental Performance: an analysis of three national environmental management programs in the context of regional disparities in China

Whether government has the political will and capacity to control pollution is crucial for environmental outcomes. A vast country such as China, with centralized policymaking but idiosyncratic local implementation of environmental regulations and drastic regional disparities in wealth, raises the question of how does the central government stimulate local environmental commitment to accommodate such diversity? In exploring this issue, this paper compares three national environmental management programs that are used as influencing and bargaining tools between the central and local governments of China: Quantitative Examination of Comprehensive Control of Urban Environment (1989), Model City for Protecting the Environment (1997) and pilot Green Gross Domestic Product (2005). Although the introduction of these schemes represents an important step forward in addressing demanding environmental issues their impact is found to be mixed. However, each scheme also has something important to offer to this particular realm of environmental management and by recognizing and compiling their comparative advantages a number of policy implications for future local commitment towards and capacity for environmental protection can be provided.

Self-motivated versus forced disclosure of environmental information in China: A comparative case study of the pilot disclosure programmes

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.

Advocating Environmental Interests in China

This article analyzes two cases of environmental advocacy initiatives in China: institutionalizing environmental information transparency and sanctioning environmental violations. Both initiatives were aimed at achieving policy change at a national or regional level. Although the study shows evidence of advocacy coalitions and pressure groups in the policy process, neither the coalitions nor the groups had a set of core beliefs that enabled them to persist over time. Because they were restricted to limited advocacy on particular concerns, they proved to be ephemeral and disappeared after the issues had been addressed. The cases conform to the pattern of decision making in an authoritarian regime where policy initiatives tend to emanate from the government rather than from the public.

Public Participation in Environmental Protection in China: Three Case Analyses

By comparing three cases of environmental activism in China, our paper answers the following three questions about public participation in environment protection in China: (1) what are the drivers for public participation? (2) Who are the agents leading the participation, and (3) Do existing laws facilitate public participation? We find heightened public awareness of environmental degradation and increasing anxieties over health and property values drive people to fight for more political space to influence decisions that have an impact on the environment. Despite the promises one finds in the letter of Chinese laws, Chinese society lacks public consultation and engagement in government decision-making, even in the area of environmental protection. This is unfortunate, because public policies without adequate public input are doomed to be clouded by illegitimacy.