NRDC: China's Budding Environmental Movement
GREAT interview with good news. China may be taking the lead in some of these arenas too...
"What's the state of the environmental movement in China?
Right now there are nearly 3,000 environmental NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in China. But the movement is very young, the groups are small and they don't have much funding. Most groups are just a few people who get together because they want to do something like plant trees, or because they notice a river is polluted and want to raise awareness. You do have a smaller number of more sophisticated groups. The oldest officially registered environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, was established in 1994. They put out China's first public-initiated annual report on the state of the environment in 2006. There are groups like the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, which has been around since 1998, engaged in extremely complex public interest legal work. And you also have leading environmentalists like Ma Jun, who's put together a very sophisticated website mapping water pollution across China."
"What are people's primary concerns?
Pollution, of course, is the big issue. You can't look outside at the Beijing air and not think it's a big issue. People are concerned with the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat."
"Aren't people reluctant to speak out about environmental problems?
I think the environment has been a safe space for these groups to develop. People don't think of it as political, it's something everyone can get behind."
GREAT interview with good news. China may be taking the lead in some of these arenas too...
"What's the state of the environmental movement in China?
Right now there are nearly 3,000 environmental NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in China. But the movement is very young, the groups are small and they don't have much funding. Most groups are just a few people who get together because they want to do something like plant trees, or because they notice a river is polluted and want to raise awareness. You do have a smaller number of more sophisticated groups. The oldest officially registered environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, was established in 1994. They put out China's first public-initiated annual report on the state of the environment in 2006. There are groups like the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, which has been around since 1998, engaged in extremely complex public interest legal work. And you also have leading environmentalists like Ma Jun, who's put together a very sophisticated website mapping water pollution across China."
"What are people's primary concerns?
Pollution, of course, is the big issue. You can't look outside at the Beijing air and not think it's a big issue. People are concerned with the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat."
"Aren't people reluctant to speak out about environmental problems?
I think the environment has been a safe space for these groups to develop. People don't think of it as political, it's something everyone can get behind."
"How are local people responding to the idea of public participation in defending the environment?
There's a lot of energy out there. We created a citizens' guide to
environmental rights, a booklet for regular people, written in layman's
terms, with lots of pictures, telling people what they can do if they
see an environmental problem, how to go to court, what to ask at a
hearing, things like that. We distributed it in six cities, and at every
stop about 200 to 300 people just swarmed the table, and they each had
specific questions about problems they were having."
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