4. Changing the Game - A Study of Two INGOs
5.1. Review of Research
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
5. Conclusions
5.1. Review of Research
Throughout the last twenty years, INGOs have been able to contribute to building an awareness of China's environmental problems through methods such as environmental education and projects designed to protect endangered habitats or species. The fact that INGOs have been able to work in these ways without the direct supervision of the state is indicative of a greater social space for non-state involvement in China. INGOs greater role in Chinese society has also been accompanied by the growth of grassroots ENGOs, and an increasingly dynamic green civil society.
Despite the increased status of environmental protection in Chinese society, and the Central Government's growing appreciation of environmental protection, political institutions charged with the responsibility of advancing environmental protection often lack the authority or capability to fulfil their mandates. This political structure inherently frustrates attempts by INGOs to advance environmental protection. This paper contends that INGOs have been able to empower state organs such as the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) and local Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) to assume a greater role in environmental protection issues. This empowerment is achieved through assisting local ENGOs in developing a stronger society, or a mobilised social structure around issues of environmental protection, consisting chiefly of ENGOs engaged with the state and local communities, as well sympathetic media. A mobilised social structure also represents an organised public opinion voice, which the state recognises it must at least be aware of in order to sustain its legitimacy. The existence of a mobilised social structure, which clearly articulates opposition to unsustainable practices, has helped to elevate the status of environmental protection issues at both the national and local levels, and given informational and moral empowerment to the MEP and local EPBs to respond effectively to environmental protection issues.
After explaining the institutional context and theoretical framework underpinning the empowerment through mobilisation thesis in Chapter Two, I
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
proceeded to locate the social and political structures that exist around environmental protection in Chapter Three. I identified the signs of the emerging social structure; a growth of grassroots environmental NGOs working in almost every province in China; that ENGOs have been able to establish working relationships with local communities; and that environmental issues have a growing currency in media reporting throughout China. I discussed problems in the Chinese political structure around environmental issues- fragmented decision making processes; a lack of status for the Ministry of Environmental Protection; as well as the marginalised position of Environmental Protection Bureaus. Despite these problems, based on information from academic literature and other important sources such as the China Environment Series, I pointed to instances suggesting that in various instances these difficulties have been overcome, where domestic political structures around environmental protection have changed. Common to many of these cases is a simultaneous mobilisation of society.
In Chapter Three, I sought to prove that INGOs play an important role in mobilising social structures, and through this mobilisation, empower the MEP and local EPBs in a fashion that produces change in the domestic political structure around environmental protection. I advanced this argument using two case studies: the national campaign opposing the development of the Nujiang Dam in Yunnan province, and the much more local campaign to prevent three chemical factories from polluting the river in Bengbu city, Anhui province. In the Nujiang Dam campaign, International Rivers Network worked closely with two domestic NGOs, Green Earth Volunteers in Beijing, and Green Watershed in Yunnan, supporting them with valuable scientific, technical and strategic information to assist them in convincingly arguing against the dams construction. These ENGOs were extremely active in Beijing and Yunnan, hosting a number of public forums that sought to highlight the effects of the proposed Nujiang Dam, building opposition within local communities so they understood clearly the negative effects of large dams, and working closely with journalists through forums such as green media salons to articulate clearly these problems in the domestic media. International Rivers was also important in the long term development of this social structure around large dam issues, owing to its presence in China for more than twenty years.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The existence of this mobilised social structure gave legitimacy and status to SEPA in its attempts to block the approval of the dam's construction, owing to the developers inability to pass the required environmental impact assessment. In contrast to SEPA's ineffectual role in opposing the Three Rivers Gorge dam, in the Nujiang campaign, they acted as an effective and important contributor to change in the domestic political structure around dam development, which stood in opposition to the positions of the state-owned hydroelectric company, Huadian Nu, and the Yunnan provincial government. Evidence of the legitimacy and status that SEPA carried in the political structure around dam development was manifest in the direct involvement of Premier Wen Jiabao on two separate occasions to halt dam construction owing to the lack of due diligence on its environmental and social impacts, and the fact that the project has been successfully delayed until this point. Although a dam may very well be built in Nujiang, it seems likely that it will avoid the worst excesses of the original proposal in 2003, and will have been influenced by the environmental impact assessment process.
Pacific Environment provided long term financial and organisational support to Green Anhui that enabled them to organically develop as a grassroots NGO and play a leading role in the successful campaign to end industrial water pollution in a section of the Huai River nearby Qiugang village. In this campaign, Green Anhui worked intimately with local villagers in Qiugang, and engaged local media in Bengbu city in order to articulate the villagers plight, as well as raise social indignation about the chemical companies negligence and the fact they were polluting with impunity. The dynamism of this campaign and the local media's coverage of it drew the attention of the media at the national level. This in turn attracted the attention of SEPA who called for the enforcement of punitive action against the offending companies. The involvement of SEPA represented a temporary change in the Bengbu city political structure around water pollution, which stimulated the Bengbu city EPB to overcome many of the problems of institutional inertia that typically plague EPBs. The effective use of fines, monitoring and the eventual successful order to close the plants demonstrated the Bengbu city EPB's new found capacity to prevent the offending chemical companies from continuing to discharge their waste water directly into the river, and its enhanced role in the local political structure surrounding water pollution.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學