China has laws against pollution, but why don’t they work?

China has enacted many harsh laws against pollution – some even stricter than in the United States (McDermott).  The effectiveness of those laws is often, in the words of Peking University’s law professor Wang Jin, “useless.”   From 1979, about 10% of all laws introduced have been related to the environment, energy, and renewable energy.  Yet those laws have failed to prevent mass pollution or reduce disputes over pollution, which have increased 20-25% every year for the past fourteen years (Wang Jin).

According to Wang Jin there are three main reasons why China’s environmental laws have failed: 1) the basic legal system is incomplete; 2) the laws that have been enacted aren’t particularly well crafted; 3) the overall aims of a law often contradict the articles of the law.  An example that Wang Jin gives is that in May 2010, the government of Guzhen county fired six local environmental-protection officials, since they had checked up on one firm three times within a 20-day period for pollution infractions.  The government fired them on the grounds that the officials’ acts were damaging efforts to attract investment.  A local Anhui province law requires environmental authorities to obtain approval before making checks.  Other places are following suit, with the result that local government is protecting the biggest polluters and energy consumers

In addition to this, according to the director of NRDC’s Environmental Law Project, even if there are laws that protect environmental sustainability, there is still a chronic lack of enforcement of laws and regulations.  At times damages can be denied for plaintiffs or factories will be allowed to continue producing carcinogenic externalities even if victims can prove a direct link to their injuries, because of corruption and the aforementioned contradictions of the law.   Also, the maximum penalty that a factory needs to pay annually for pollution infractions is merely $100,000, says Matthew Collins, a project manager at a powerful NGO in China that was responsible for reporting Apple’s poor environmental records to the world, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) who I interviewed in China.   As the fine is relatively small for factories that have larger profits, they simply pay the fine and continue polluting.  The fine provides little incentive for these factories to reduce their pollution waste.

There are however exceptions where the government does enforce laws and regulations.  For example, The China Price, discusses how Shenzhen officials turned down an Italian businessman that wanted to open a leather tannery on the grounds that his “factory was too polluting,” so he had to settle “in Xiaolan… spend $200,000 on a water treatment system to ensure that he didn’t discharge toxic chemicals into the water supply” (Harney 268).

Additionally, the government has made pollution environmental data and reports of externalities from factories public information that can be accessed online through IPE’s website.  This has lead to the leaking of the environmental infractions of Apple factories.  However, there is still a lot of mistrust in the government’s data.

Despite such improvements, China is still ravaged with many problems.  The government has done little to tackle air pollution; so far it seems like more talk than action.  A recent MIT study shows that there has been “an improvement in air quality,” but this is only relative to China’s growth, meaning that overall pollution still has increased.   In fact, China emitted more greenhouse gases than the US and Canada put together has – up by 171% from 2000 – according to the Energy information Administration 2011 report.  Pollution healthcare-related costs have sky-rocketed “from $22 billion in 1975 to $112 billion in 2005,” according to a MIT report, and “40% of china’s rivers are polluted with industrial waste,” according to government official Jiao Yong.  Also, in September, 30 people who protested against businesses that polluted Haining were arrested.  Among those arrested was a man who blogged that local pollution has caused cancer in 31 inhabitants of his village, according to NY Times.

There are some positive signs of China enforcing some laws supporting environmental sustainability, but it is such a massive country that is still developing.  Priorities still lie in developing the nation more, but with the government’s recognition that pollution impedes growth, it is forcing them to take a few steps to tackle it.

Factories Go Green with the Push of an NGO, IPE

Click here to make an online donation to the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.   Even $1 can help.

Sony, Pepsi, Walmart, H&M, Nike, Motorola, HP, and Apple are among thousands of corporations that a Chinese NGO, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), has leaked as being major pollution sources in China.  They have forced hundreds of corporations to explain why their practices violate China’s pollution laws and made dozens clean up their act.   Many of these companies now use IPE’s website to monitor their pollution.  It was not until the early 2000s, when China’s government decided that access to factory pollution data and environmental information is a public right.  IPE has taken advantage of this law to force corporations to eliminate pollution.  “It is the only NGO in China to have created a comprehensive database of environmental violations” (Lee, et al).

This NGO is run by merely seven people in a converted office, on the 6^th floor of a Beijing apartment building (Lee, et al).  The man who heads it is Ma Jun, named as the world’s 100 most influential persons by Time magazine in 2006, formerly was an investigative journalist at the South China Morning Post.  He and IPE have the complicated job of monitoring pollution in China, but he does this with the help of many individuals and NGOs (including Green Anhui, NRPD, Friends of Nature, Green Beagle, Environmental Protection Commonwealth Assoc., and many more).  IPE was the first to create a real-time water pollution map in China.  “To protect water resources, we need to encourage public participation and strengthen law enforcement. In some places, polluting factories and companies are being protected by local governments and officials,” he says on his Facebook page.

With a small budget of about one million yuan annually (US$147,000), this tiny NGO focuses on “shame and blame” pressure tactics on mainly multinationals (most of the violators on IPE’s list are domestic companies, but they tend to be more dismissive about environmentalism) (Lee, et al).  Ma Jun, using his well-honed investigative journalist skills, exposes to the world the devastating pollution and humanitarian breaches of these corporations.  In turn, the public gets furious, some protest, others boycott and this makes the companies lose business (decreased demand, customer and employee loyalty (they can lose some of their “cream-of-the-crop,” smartest employees)), so it gives them the incentive to change their unethical polluting practices.

Most corporations ignore IPE’s notifications of environmental breaches for as long as possible.  For example, Apple (as discussed extensively in this blog) ignored IPE‘s complaints for months until humiliating headlines, such as “Apple Rotten to the Core,” about the corporation’s pollution scandal were reported throughout the world, had social media and the public on fire.   However, other companies (who with bad track records of corporate scandal have learnt from their lessons), such as Walmart and Nike, embrace IPE as “a partner in improving their environmental management of their Chinese supply chains” (Lee, et al).   “The IPE Web site provides a really good platform for us to reduce the risk of environmental violations,” says May Qiu, Nike‘s health, safety, and environment manager for Asia (qtd. from Lee, et al).

With so much outsourcing from China, it is hard for these large corporations to keep track of all their vendors.  For example, Walmart has more than “50,000 suppliers there” (Lee, et al).  Thus, many of them use  IPE to keep a watchful eye on their suppliers’ environmental records.

Click here to make an online donation to the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.   Even $1 can help.

[1] Lee, Hau, Erica Plambeck, and Pamela Yatsko. “Embracing Green in China… with an NGO Nudge.” Supply Chain Management Review 16.2 (2012)

IPE’s pollution map

About this Blog and How NGOs are Cleaning China’s Smog

How do we keep children from being affected by pollution in China? Face-masks? Keeping them indoors? Stopping companies from creating pollution? NGOs? Note: we don’t normally put this kid (my nephew) in the fridge, he was propped inside while the fridge was unplugged for the purposes of taking this picture.

China is the world’s biggest polluter, but the government is too concerned with its GDP to tackle the problem. People are furious: there are about 500 protests a day, reports the Atlantic.  With this demand for reform, changes are finally materializing with the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and there is even evidence that the government is taking action – especially in larger cities.  This blog is dedicated to these NGOs (especially the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs that has exposed thousands of China’s pollution-leaking corporations) and to the people who are fighting it.

My name is Margaret Mak, I’m a NYU grad student focused on sustainable energy, law and international relations.   I have family in China (including a brother, sister-in-law and their son, my rascal 1-year-old nephew shown in pictures below and above).  As you can read in my first entry of this blog, it was when I last visited them in October 2011 when I became extensively worried about how pollution does and can affect their health.  Particularly, I was concerned about my little nephew, since he is growing, constantly absorbing the molecules in his environment and inhaling the contaminants into his trillions of multiplying and hungry cells that are making him generate from a toddler to the adult he will finally blossom into.  When he inhales all the carbon monoxide that China is notorious of,  I wonder if the pollutants will make him develop asthma, respiratory problems or if the pollution one day will get so bad, as it is already is in some areas in China, that it will ultimately mutate his healthy cells to produce cancerous ones.  I honestly do not want to think this far ahead and aggravate my family for worrying about these issues, but they are timely problems and the pollution is only getting worse.  In some areas in China, pollution is so ravenous that children are born with deformities, cancer and learning disabilities.

The more we don’t act on these issues, the larger these problems will become, not only in China, but throughout the world.  The actions of one nation has repercussions on others.  This is a global phenomenon and not one that is reduced to just that of China.  In our globalized world, if it were not for our incessant desire for cheap goods, the existence of autocratic governments and judicial systems that do not recognize humanitarian rights, this pollution would not be so widespread.  Luckily, this is changeable, we can make a difference.

Of course we may not have the power to rapidly transform governments and judicial systems into adhering to humanitarian rights that will decrease pollution.  Governments have other prerogatives concerned with increasing their countries’ GDPs, which understandingly can take precedence over pollution (England, France, China, America and other nations would not have developed so quickly if they did not take this route).  However, China’s now a much wealthier country than before, it can now afford to fix its environment  just as European nations did once they met a certain GDP.  This resonates with the Kuznet’s curve predictions, which anticipates that when countries hit a certain point of wealth, they start tackling pollution – China is at this point.  Armed with technology, social media and NGOs that report to us about corporate scandals, we can pressure the government and companies creating this pollution to clean-up.

Companies thrive from our demand.  If we just replace our demands for products that create mass pollution to ones that are sustainable (that do not hurt the environment), we can make a difference.  Companies react to demand, and big ones can afford to take a cut in their profits by being more environmentally friendly – meaning we can still get these goods at a cheap price.  We are already making this change, look at Nike, they no longer implement child labor.  Or look at Apple, they are now making factory changes to cut pollution (as I discuss in this blog).  There are many examples as I will detail further in “China’s Smog,” but lets not make them rare exemplifications, lets make them the universal norm, so that our nephews, children, friends and family (or those who have potential of being so) do not endure what many have from pollution.  Lets investigate the NGOs that are tackling this problem and the tools that we can use to make pollution a topic of the past.

His diaper’s loading much less than the pollution is in China