Toeing the Line Chinese public interest attorney Jingjing Zhang joins forces with E-LAW to promote environmental reform. BY KERA ABRAHAM China's pollution problems have been getting a lot of American press lately. The November 2005 factory explosion that poured 100 tons of toxins into the Songhua River made international headlines, and scholars are noting with some alarm that much of China's grassland is quickly becoming desert. Both international and Chinese environmental organizations are mobilizing against a planned dam project on the Nu River, right on the heels of their unsuccessful fight against the mammoth Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Recent NASA satellite photos show Eastern China obscured under a curtain of haze, with Beijing almost entirely covered. Even the nation's communist rulers, not known for self-criticism, are acknowledging the problems of contaminated air, water and soil in the nation of 1.3 billion people. Jingjing Zhang That the Chinese government is even naming the problem signals an unprecedented opportunity for reform. In 1992, the Chinese National Congress adopted environmental protection goals in tandem with economic development strategies, and in 2000, State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) minister Xie Zhenhua declared that improving China's environment would be a top priority. "One of the trend lines you see in China is a recognition of needing to clean up environmentally as part of the process of globalization," said UO Visiting Assistant Professor Hari Osofsky, who teaches courses on Chinese law. Today, China has dozens of environmental laws on the books. The most significant of these include the Environmental Protection Law of 1989, which creates a framework for environmental regulation and gives citizens the right to sue polluters, and the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of 2005, which requires the government to conduct environmental reviews of major development projects and hold public hearings. But where there are laws there must be lawyers to defend them, and China doesn't have enough, Osofsky said. Although the government created a fledgling legal system in the early 1980s, only recently have significant numbers of Chinese law professionals emerged, and few of them have litigated environmental cases against the state. Into that vacuum steps Chinese public interest lawyer Jingjing Zhang, the lead attorney for the Center for Legal Aid to Pollution Victims (CLAPV) in Beijing, established in 1998 as China's first environmental law organization. "Theoretically, the Chinese government always thinks environmental protection is important, but it is clear that the implementation of these declarations and agendas has stalled," Zhang wrote by e-mail. "China's breakneck economic development relies in no small part on the depletion of natural resources and the weakening of pollution control mechanisms." Zhang, who has represented plaintiffs in several of China's pioneering environmental lawsuits, is the first Chinese partner in the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW), a network of more than 300 grassroots environmental lawyers in more than 60 countries. Zhang will visit Eugene from January 9-18 to work with E-LAW U.S. staff on several outreach and education projects. That partnership will not only expand E-LAW to include one of the world's largest countries, but it will also offer Zhang and her colleagues at CLAPV the support of an international network of legal professionals, many of whom work in transitioning nations like China where crusading lawyers may be at risk. "There are other public interest attorneys around the world who are facing similar challenges, and we all share our legal and scientific resources to build a better future," said E-LAW U.S. Communications Director Maggie Keenan. "Part of what we do is help protect the human rights of our partners around the world." Osofsky said that Chinese environmental lawyers such as Zhang face several formidable obstacles. Because law is a fairly new field in China, attorneys often deal with an inconsistent judicial system and inadequately trained judges, she said. Some laws are secret, local governments often obfuscate legal processes in an effort to protect their interests, and the Chinese people are still largely unsure about their right to participate, she said. "You'll notice a consistent theme: not enough lawyers and not enough enforcement personnel," Osofsky said. "[Zhang] does very important work in trying to help bring public participation and access to information, but you can view lawyers like her as part of a larger process of filling infrastructure gaps." Choosing her words carefully, Zhang confirmed Osofsky's description of the Chinese legal system. Chinese environmental laws are promising but enforcement is a challenge, she wrote, and the state environmental agency is like a "tiger without teeth." Judges are often partial to the state, and provincial governments are sometimes unwilling to carry out the law. CLAPV, affiliated with a state-controlled university but funded entirely by foreign sources such as the Ford Foundation, is the only organization in China that offers free legal aide to pollution victims, she explained. Zhang has reason to be cautious, said UO political science professor Dick Kraus. "China's public policy has been real clear for the past three decades: China needs a stronger legal system, and for that you need more laws, more lawyers, more courts," he said. "However, doing this runs into some tensions with a system that has been not based on law, but on political power. So lawyers have been on the front line, and some lawyers end up in jail." The key to protecting attorneys who challenge the state, Kraus said, is having good connections with those in power. "There's a whole bunch of people in the Chinese government who want more reform, who want a cleaner environment, who want more freedom of speech and more democracy," he said. "Terribly important in Chinese politics is patronage. That can carry the day and keep you from being put out of business." CLAPV may have the right network to make things happen. Zhang describes the organization's director, Wang Canfa, as a well-known environmental law professor who has connections within the central government and National Congress. E-LAW reports that in December 2005, CLAPV won a landmark lawsuit when a Chinese court directed the country's largest chlorate plant to clean up its operations and compensate more than 1,700 farmers for health damages caused by toxic wastes. Nevertheless, CLAPV faces an uphill battle litigating against a state that controls China's major media, academia, industry and courts. Chinese lawyers are wise to tread carefully, testing environmental laws in court without appearing confrontational to the central government, Kraus said. "The fact that [Zhang] is doing what she's doing is some indication that the range of freedom of expression is much bigger in China than it was a generation ago," he said. "And in fact, a lot of people want them to succeed." Already, China is ahead of the U.S. on several environmental fronts. China's National Congress recently adopted stricter auto emission standards than those in the U.S., and in 2001, an article in Science reported that China's greenhouse gas emissions have declined since 1996. The Observer reports that Chinese authorities are planning to create several "eco-cities," or sustainable urban centers, to attract foreign investors and present a prototype in sustainable development. The Chinese government closed thousands of coal mines that failed to meet safety standards in 2005, and Beijing is cleaning up its urban core in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. But China's environmental reform becomes more complex as world consumption — led by the U.S. — drives up demand for China's cheaply-produced goods. "It's our pollution, because they're making our stuff," Kraus said. "We have had improvement in the American environment over the last several decades, and the sole reason that we're able to do it is that we're shipping our pollution to China. If they are going to put more controls on pollution, it's going to raise the prices at Wal-Mart. And then maybe Wal-Mart will outsource stuff to India instead." That bottom line — the ruthless reality of globalization — underscores the difficulty of the task before Zhang, her colleagues at CLAPV and their E-LAW partners around the world. Gingerly, determinedly, they test the line between economic growth and environmental reform, putting their faith in the great hypothesis that the two can happen together. For more information, visit www.clapv.org or www.elaw.org
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