Environmental Challenges and Transparency in China

Speakers

• Ma Jun, Journalist and Author, Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE)

Highlights

• Although China has experienced tremendous economic growth, the country now faces severe environmental challenges such as increasing pollution and ecodegradation. As threats to public health and social stability, these challenges must be addressed through raising public awareness and demand for a better environment and government support for sustainable strategies and policies.
• The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs’s (IPE) China Water Pollution Map enables the public to access thousands of environmental quality, discharge, and infraction records released by various government agencies. Empowered with this information, the public has the opportunity to place greater pressure on polluting companies to comply with environmental standards and create solutions to improve their performance.
• Companies in China are beginning to realize that stakeholders are increasingly demanding more transparency on environmental and supply chain performance. As a result, companies are finding ways to collaborate with stakeholders to establish sustainable and innovative solutions to combat environmental challenges.

Memorable Quotes

“If you want people to participate in sustainability efforts, they need to have information and know what is going on. With that in mind, we created the Water Pollution Map in 2006, so people can check the water pollution and water quality in their regions and know who the biggest polluters are.” —Ma Jun, IPE

“Chinese people may not all have political or social rights, but they do have one power and that is consumption. IPE can provide information to consumers to help them make green choices. We call upon consumers to use their buying power to influence companies’ environmental performance.” —Ma Jun, IPE

“But now there’s no place to hide, and there’s a growing consensus in our country that transparency is important. Now the businesses are starting to get that.” —Ma Jun, IPE

Overview

Zhou kicked off the session with a brief presentation of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan as a new model for Chinese development. The plan’s objectives include: rebalancing the economy toward domestic consumption, refocusing attention on “sustainable growth” instead of “total growth,” and prioritizing public welfare to create a harmonious society. Zhou also reported on China’s specific environmental targets for reductions in energy intensity (16 percent), CO₂ emissions (17 percent), and water consumption (30 percent).

Ma then shared his views on the current environmental challenges in China and the collaborative opportunities he believes could address these challenges. Ma voiced his concerns that clean bodies of water in China have become a rarity. Because of severe pollution, 300 million rural residents do not have access to safe drinking water, and one-fifth of key cities’ urban water sources do not meet water-quality standards. In addition, 12 million tons of crops are contaminated by heavy metals each year, resulting in the destruction of clean water sources by industrial-waste discharge. China is now trying to combat these environmental challenges and the resulting social instability.

Ma stressed that, on the journey toward sustainability, China’s real obstacles are a lack of technology, money, and most importantly, motivation on behalf of the public to pressure companies to improve. Public participation is critical to creating more sustainable programs and policies in China. In response, Ma and the IPE are working to equip the public with information regarding water pollution and environmental management in China through the listing of 89,000 records of violations by polluting companies. Ma emphasized his hope that the public and stakeholders will become more knowledgeable about environmental problems in their communities and become motivated to encourage companies to change.

Ma also stressed his belief that in order to create successful solutions to China’s environmental challenges, companies need to not only comply but also take additional actions to encourage both tier-one suppliers and suppliers further down the supply chain to be transparent about their environmental management and efforts. Ma reminded the audience that environmental challenges are real and severe and that our current actions or inactions will affect not just this generation but generations to come.

Ma then spoke about the role of transparency as an important channel or platform for addressing these challenges. In China, there is growing evidence that companies are becoming more transparent about environmental issues and operational management. Ma believes that business, the public, and organizations will need to collaborate and all be part of the solution.

During the Q&A session, Ma answered questions on the credibility of IPE’s data and the government agencies that provide the information. Ma noted that although not all the information can be confirmed as 100 percent accurate and that data quality is always a problem in China, it is still very important for the IPE, the government, and the public to look at the available data and then push companies to recognize how they are polluting and how they can address and improve their environmental performance.