New Environmental Transparency Rule Opens Opportunity for Public Participation

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China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) unveiled a new transparency rule last month requiring all government environmental agencies and polluting companies to disclose important environmental information to the public. The rule will take effect in May 2008, along with a new regulation recently issued by the State Council to open up access to government information to ensure greater official transparency nationwide.

China’s current environmental laws include the concept of “open information” but specify few details on how to implement this. Data on water and air pollution are collected but often circulated among government agencies, opening a back door for collusion between local officials and polluters. Meanwhile, the lack of public access to environmental information that is kept secret by local officials and polluters has become a major obstacle for citizens involved in environmental protection and to pursuing litigation against polluters.

“Reducing pollution emissions is not simply a technical problem in China, but rather a problem of adjusting traditional models of economic growth and their long-existing patterns of interests,” said Pan Yue, vice minister of SEPA, who believes the public should play a vital role in fighting pollution since “they have the greatest interests in improving their environment.”

China’s new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Law, issued in 2003, is one of the major environmental regulations requiring public participation. In practice, however, little attention has been paid to public opinions. In 2005, SEPA held the nation’s first public hearing on the environmental impact of a proposed government action in Beijing's Old Summer Palace after the plan was exposed by media and local environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A follow-up regulation describing the public participatory process in EIAs was released by SEPA last February. Since then, some 43 projects totaling some 1.6 billion yuan (US$207 million) in investments have been halted for violating the specific rules.

Sharing environmental information is fundamental to ensuring public participation in environmental decision making, but it is still in its infancy in today’s China. Many environmental policy and decision makers still consider the participatory process a formality and are used to informing rather than consulting with the public; others worry that public participation could lead to social disorder and conflict.