This week, I attended a conference in Nanjing, China on Taihu Lake water pollution. The event was organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Japanese Institute of Developing Economics (IDE-JETRO) and Nanjing University.

Several of my colleagues from partner organizations based in China were there as well as several from U.S. based organizations, including one from Great Lakes Office of National Wildlife Federation. On the Japanese side, there were five to six institutions, including professors, researchers and one NGO, Japan for Sustainability.

(more…)

Posted by Yang Chu

It’s the 14^th day of my 28-day trip backpacking around China to help seek out, investigate, and report on sources of water pollution. I’m in a village in Bengbu, trying not to breathe as factories around me belch black smoke into the air. With me is Zhouxiang and Zhangjun, Executive Director and Operations Director of Green Anhui, respectively. Next to us a group of local construction workers are in the middle of re-plastering the walls on someone’s decrepit looking house.

(more…)

I arrived in Hong Kong, China thinking that I had packed a perfect amount of clothes. The weather was warm and humid but also slightly breezy at times. Weather.com was once again reliable until the Chinese government decided to shoot some silver iodide and dry ice into the sky, to induce rain to relieve the drought in the north. It set off a snow storm and extreme weather conditions across the country that was to claim 40 lives and billions of dollars in lost agricultural and industrial productions. Luckily, all it gave me was a cold that lasted for weeks. When I arrived in Guangzhou it was as if I had walked into a freezer. I scrambled to a nearby mall and filled up my suitcase with new winter clothes. By the time I sat down at Green Eyes’ office near Zhongshan University, I was appropriately bundled up.

(more…)

David Gordon and I spent the last few days at the Wild Salmon Center’s annual “Sustainable Salmon Fisheries in the Russian Far East” conference in Portland. Still in my first month on the job, I boarded the plane last Sunday both excited and anxious. I was thrilled at the opportunity to meet my American and Russian colleagues and learn from their experience, but I was also nervous to be a neophyte among so many respected and experienced conservationists.

(more…)

I was born and grew up along a tributary of the Pearl River, the Fenjiang in Foshan. In the early 90s, one of our favorite pastimes during the warm summer nights, was to get “yeshao” or “midnight snacks” at the dozens of outdoor eateries that sprang up along “Fenjiang”, the Fen River. These eateries would cook up greasy but tasty fried noodles, fried rice and various seafood stir fries. Vegetables and dishes were washed with water directly pulled up in buckets from the river. No one thought much of it.

By the time I returned from my first trip home after immigrating to the US, in 1998, things had turned badly. The Fenjiang smelled like the Soy Sauce factory nearby and had many different colors similar to the textiles coming out of another factory. In my most recent trip last year, the river didn’t smell as bad, but still look dead, if not poisonous. People had different ideas as to which factories caused the pollution, but everyone accepted the situation as inevitable and never bothered with finding out the truth. Then this week came a timely and well investigated Greenpeace report on the companies that are poisoning the Pearl River and the larger political context which are allowing the situation to deteriorate. It answered so many questions and highlighted the urgency to speak up.

(more…)

5th Annual Water Coalition Meeting Participants.

The first time I met Zhang Yadong, he had just started working at Green Longjiang full time for 2 months. The new graduate of Harbin Industrial University had been a long time volunteer leader of the organization and was recruited to be the Executive Director as soon as he completed his study in Water Engineering. A year later, the baby-faced Zhang retains his small and skinny frame but has grown a beard and a mustache. He was nervous and excited when he greeted a horde of us at the hotel. I, Wen Bo, all of our partners and allies within the Water Pollution Coalition were arriving from all over the country to attend the 5^th Annual Coalition Meeting hosted by Green Longjiang. It will be held in the provincial capital Harbin of Heilongjiang Province and Wudalianchi, a famous volcanic park surrounded by 5 lakes.

Zhang now manages two new staff and was entrusted to host this year’s Water Pollution Coalition Meeting, a task he volunteered at last year’s meeting in Lanzhou and apparently regretted shortly after a few drinks during our last night there.  At the time he was still managing the office and the Songhua River project alone. He would get up at 7am every day, for six days a week, to arrive at the empty office at 9am and work all day alone except when there were volunteer activities. It has been a lonely 10 months but Yadong has proven himself to be patient and resilient. He told me during one of our long chats about how he wanted to make a difference and develop his own signature program to protect Songhua River. He wanted to make sure he grows as a leader and he was giving himself two years.

A year later, he and his team successfully hosted our biggest Water Pollution Coalition Meeting ever with almost 30 participants from 10 different organizations all over China.

Everything went smoothly in the course of the 3-day conference, beyond even my own expectation. We informally reflected on our accomplishments and disappointments as environmental activists in the last year; learned from two leading environmental NGOs working on water pollution issues and environmental governance – the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) and Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) in Beijing; did training on Strategic Planning for organizations and for the water project; presented Pacific Environment’s new subgrant proposal guidelines for 2009-2010; held two sessions of Board Meeting for Green Longjiang; and brainstormed our new idea to form a Rapid Response Team within the coalition to respond to severe water pollution incidents such as the ones that occurred in Inner-Mongolia, Henan and Shaanxi Province in the last months.

By the time we got on the bus for another 6-hour ride back to Harbin, new friendships have formed between the many new and old members of the coalition; fatigue and excitements were budding in the air and there was a line of people trying to sit next to me to discuss their thoughts and ideas for the Rapid Response Team.

2008 Water Pollution Conference Participants

Posted by Daniela Salaverry

Gansu, China — Zhang Yadong is furiously taking notes. This is his first Water Pollution Network Conference, and his goal for participating is to learn. Zhang recently graduated and has assumed the leadership role of his organization Green Longjiang in Harbin.

“I’m just starting off in this position,” Zhang says, “I want to learn from Zhao Zhong and Zhou Xiang during this conference. I want to get a sense of how to develop my programs so I have some direction when I go back to Harbin.”

Zhang and 20 other grassroots environmental leaders and Pacific Environment partners have gathered in Gansu Province in western China for our fourth annual water pollution network conference.  Our local host in Gansu is Green Camel Bell (GCB), Gansu’s first independent environmental NGO. As we all meet in GCB’s office for our first evening of discussion and introductions, people are tired from their travels but excited. The energy is palpable, and people are eager to share ideas, learn from each other and build partnerships.

On the second day, we travel from the city of Lanzhou, to the countryside town of Liujia Xia. On the outskirts of town Ran Li Ping, GCB’s project coordinator points out some of the heavy-industry. I realize that the blue sky had suddenly turned into a thick haze as we drove through this industrial zone. The change was dramatic, and a visible way to remember the big pollution challenge these groups, and China as a whole, are dealing with.

We stop again another hour down the road in a small village where GCB is doing outreach on water quality issues. This village had a water pump and filter built over a decade ago, but high silt levels caused the pumping facility to stop working only days after it began operating, and the door has been locked ever since. Green Camel Bell is working with this town to figure out the best ways they can get clean water, and earlier this year they donated a water filtration system to the town’s clinic.

When we returned we dove into two days of discussions on water pollution campaign strategies, program updates, and ideas for future collaboration and partnership. Water Pollution Network partners presented on their program work: Green Anhui discussed their success in helping to close a local factory; Green Oasis presented on their collaboration with Ma Jun; Green Camel Bell discussed their partnership with a local enterprise that makes water filtration products. Pacific Environment staff facilitated conversations on campaign strategy development and how we want to strengthen our partnerships with the members of this network.

After two days of on-going discussions and information, we’re all simultaneously exhausted and rejuvenated. The forward thinking of these groups, as they sit on the brink of growth and change, is inspiring.

In an exchange, our partners from China met with US NGOs to learn about their work.

Posted by Xiu Min Li

Today I met one of the NGOs we work with in China – Green Student Forum. It is the foremost student environmental organization that is comprised of student groups across Beijing and the country. GSF is characterized by the discipline and enthusiasm of China’s new generation of leaders.

GSF’s office was located in one of Beijing’s tens and thousands of residential complexes, like most NGOs. When I arrived I was met by a student volunteer, Zhang Xiangui, the coordinator of the water project, and six other students. They were eager and shy. They shook my hand heavily and looked away as soon as I caught their eyes. I was sent to sit in the best chair in the midst of a room of tiny wooden stools.

These students came from the four teams of university volunteers who were assigned different sections of the Long River. They were responsible for organizing student volunteers from their own school to do a survey of the river, compile information about the history and important sites in the area, and interview neighborhoods along the river about their concerns. The end result would be a Green Map of Beijing’s Rivers. The plan was to include facts on the river and a conservation guide on the back of the map. This map would be distributed through various public events in schools and neighborhoods. They would also contact the Tourism bureau to see if they would be interested in distributing the map.

About eleven students and I went to do a field trip to the Long River. We went to Jishuitan, one of the subway stops I was most familiar with as it was nearest to my house when I lived in Beijing almost 7 years ago. It was still familiar but visibly renovated. A giant new bike tent was created with rows of racks two levels high. Across from the station is a shining new shopping center. The Military Theatre next door had a complete face lift. It used to be an aging building with a stale facade and a dusty ticketing booth that was always closed. Now it’s an artsy glass structure with spiky steel bars rising to the sky and a digital display of its current shows.  The sidewalks have all been fixed up and along the river that run through the area, it was landscaped with plants and trees along stone walls with carvings of calligraphies and were equipped with viewing platforms dotted with people fishing, couples cuddling and old people idling. A student from Beijing Normal University met up with us and served as local guide.

The students were pleased with the makeover but skeptical it would be kept up with after the Olympics. A decorated fountain was pumping up clear water that quickly merged into the deep green river too muddled to see through more than two inches deep. Occasionally there were tiny black fishes that swam right beneath the surface and they would be met with utmost enthusiasm by the students. I asked if people fishing here would actually eat them, they laughed. They fish for pleasure and always released them back in. The fish are not edible – some fish can grow even in the most polluted rivers.
We walked along the river on a stone path. There was a long patch that ran next to residential buildings and offices. It was a mile long path with no exit in between. All the entrances were sealed off with medal locks reinforced with medal fences. We just walked and walked and walked. Every section of the river was heavily maintained, either through careful landscaping or heavily secured fences. But clearly no one was keeping it sanitized because the path was dotted with spotty feces and trash that the students called bombs.

Our last stop was the reality part of the tour of the river. We arrived at a section populated by the “floating population” as the students called them – migrants who came to seek jobs and managed to stay within the city as opposed to being out on the 4th ring road on the outskirt of no man’s land. We immediately came upon foul odors as we entered a narrow alley leading to a settlement. Amongst dilapidated houses there was a hair salon and a restaurant. Three teenage girls with various styles of colored and spiky hair were lounging around in shorts and fixing their nails inside the salon where there was clearly no business.

After dinner, we returned to the office for the report and their plan for next year. Inspired by Fei’s visit to the US with the Green Corp, GSF wants to implement similar program in China. Through their experience working with other environmental NGOs, they feel that many NGOs’ main obstacle is lacking good leadership/organizers. They would like to establish a training program specifically to address that. The training would include team building, project management, technical understanding of environmental issues and other basic skills like material developments. Approximately five participants would be trained on this issue while taking on a community based project. They would then be dispatched to other established NGOs as interns during the summer to gain hands’ on experience in all the elements they had been trained on.

As I looked around the room, most students including Fei and Zhang were not from Beijing, with many from the countryside which desperately needed attention to their most basic environmental needs. From the perspective of building a widespread environmental movement across China, I felt that it was important to have an element in their training that involves students doing a small project to fix a small problem facing their own home town/village. They agreed that this would be appropriate at a more advance stage of their training, once they’ve been trained of all the elements of doing a project and gotten experience working with a successful NGO seeing how a project plays out in real life, it would then be a logical step to bring their new found knowledge to make a difference in their hometown.

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.