Pollution versus Capacity
Beijing, China
Posted by Xiu Min Li
Beijing was wet and grey this morning. There was no chance for a blue sky! Today I met with Yu Zhijiao of CLAPV, the short name for Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims. Established in 1998, CLAPV is the foremost legal aid center in China for victims of environmental pollution. The center is involved in a wide range of programs to promote China’s environmental laws: it conducts legal research, produces popular guides to increase public understanding of environmental laws, trains lawyers, judges and NGOs on legal advocacy and it also runs a hotline for pollution victims.
I met with Yu Zhijiao, the Assistant Director of CLAPV. She was a short, baby-faced woman who recently completed her PhD at the university; she just started working full time at the center. Like many who spent most of their life in the academic world, she was confident and plainly dressed. She spoke very softly and even when she was being critical about something, her voice seemed to convey the opposite.
The center is doing some really good work, representing pollution victims that have no where to turn for their grievance. There’s a victim’s hotline staffed by volunteers five days a week to take reports. People can also write letters or send emails, faxes, etc. I asked her how many complaints they received on a daily basis. She said an average of six or seven. I was shocked. For a country of 1.3 billion people and with such notorious environmental record, I would expect the country’s only hotline for victims of environmental pollution to be receiving hundreds of calls. But then again the center is staffed by one volunteer a day, using one phone line. Yu explained to me that when she first started, the phone would ring off the hook throughout the day. She realized that it was because the center got a lot of publicity when it first got started. Their director, Wang Canfa, was constantly being interviewed by newspapers and televisions programs. But the center proved unequipped for the massive amounts of complaints it was getting from across the country. Since then, they’ve limited their publicity and the calls gradually went down. Now the center is dealing with about 14 active cases with an additional 4 cases pending further investigation to determine their eligibility.
My main question today was regarding the new Public Disclosure of Environmental Information Law that went into effect in May of this year. The center has been utilizing it on behalf of the alleged victims of environmental pollution. Yu showed me an information request form for one of their clients. Two fish farmers from Henan province suspected that a shoe factory nearby the farm was polluting the river and killing their fish. They called the center and this form was filled out for them. I looked at the form and found that it contained fairly technical terminology. One has to know what information to request in order to get the right information. An ordinary person would not know how to request the right information. Yu then explained to me that this is a case that has already been accepted by the center and two lawyers from Henan province are now dealing with it, with support from the Center. The plaintiffs in this case, the fish farmers, were suing for compensation of their lost fish.
I asked Yu how this type of litigation lawsuit fairs in China’s legal culture. She said it is still very rare that judges would grant financial rewards to victims of environmental pollution. More often than not, the judges would order the polluting factories to stop its practice. That is the best they could hope for.
Tags: China, community partners, pollution, rivers, Water
