The government gives its Davids a sling to use against polluting Goliaths
Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition
WHEN, in 2008, the American embassy in Beijing started publishing a measure of the fetid smog enveloping the capital, China’s government protested and ordered the publication to stop. Its instinct was to sweep unwelcome facts about the nauseating level of pollution in the country under the carpet. Now that seems to be changing. New rules on pollution say that official data, formerly held secretly, should be published. It is an important step, not just for China’s environment, but also because it gives new power to the large and growing movement of citizen activists who have been lobbying for the government to clean up.
China is now emitting almost twice as much carbon dioxide as the next-biggest polluter, America. At current rates, it will produce 500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1990 and 2050—as much as the whole world produced between the start of the Industrial Revolution and 1970. Pollutants in the air in Beijing have hit 40 times the level decreed safe by the World Health Organisation. Yet China did not have a ministry devoted to environmental protection until 2008, and the government has done its best to keep information about the levels of filth in the air and water under wraps. Even now, the state is keeping secret a nationwide survey of soil pollution.
The new rules that have just come into effect signal the beginning of a move towards openness. They require 15,000 enterprises, including some of the biggest state-owned ones, to make public in real time details of their air pollution, waste water and heavy-metals discharges (see article). In the past, polluters gave the data on their emissions only to the government. In future NGOs such as the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, run by Ma Jun, a former investigative journalist who has been badgering the government on green issues for years, will get these data to analyse and publicise as they wish. Things are opening up at a local level, too. In 2012 only a few cities, including Beijing, published statistics on air quality. Now 179 do. And more firms are volunteering information about pollution—especially those that need foreign investors.
via China’s environment: A small breath of fresh air | The Economist.
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