Rise in Legal Philanthropy May Help China’s Environment

A new coalition of law firms in eastern China may represent a landmark rise in the use of legal measures to address the country's mounting environmental woes. Ten law firms in Zibo City, a heavy industrial city in Shandong province, voluntarily set up an environmental law alliance to assist local environmental authorities in handling pollution complaints and reports and to provide legal assistance to pollution victims, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Zibo City has witnessed a growing number of pollution complaints and disputes in recent years as the local economy has developed. Residents have traditionally relied on the government to respond to these concerns, sending letters of complaint and frequently paying visits to local officials in person. Inundated with incoming environmental disputes, the city government is now trying to offset the burden by channeling people to the courts. It is against this background that the recent legal alliance took shape.

For legal professionals, representing environmental victims in today's China is more a philanthropic deed than a profitable endeavor. Plaintiffs, mostly underrepresented rural farmers, have few resources to engage in long and complicated legal processes. In nearly all cases, the plaintiffs are suing powerful business groups to which local governments often serve as covert accomplices.

Cases that do eventually make to courts seldom yield much success, due to this clandestine local influence or to the plaintiffs' failure to collect scientific evidence to support their allegations, as required by the court. In the few occasions that plaintiffs have won their cases, the ruling was either too lenient on the defendants or ultimately unenforceable.

The absence of an effective legal system forces many of China's pollution victims to resort to violence and mass protests. The number of mass protests against pollution has been on the rise across the country, with some 60,000 in 2006 alone.

The new legal professionals' coalition represents a positive next step in China's struggling grassroots efforts to mount environmental lawsuits. In the past, similar initiatives have been undertaken by the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, a non-governmental organization registered in 1998 under Beijing Politics and Law University. But with no full-time staff, the group depends on volunteers-including law professors, teachers, graduate students, and lawyers-to help disadvantaged pollution victims.

The latest alliance in Zibo will bring more law professionals into these environmental efforts. It may also set an example for other cities to follow, engendering hope for the gradual construction of a more sophisticated judicial system to tackle China's pollution.

Yingling Liu is manager of the China Program at the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-D.C. based environmental research organization.