China Environmental Law

CELB is donning its cap and settling its brains for a long winter’s nap.  The nap will last the next week or so, but we speak only with respect to CELB’s online activities.  Our offices remain open and we have exams to prepare and grade, work to finish up, and all your thoughtful gifts to [...]

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There was a flurry of activity last year following the effective date of China’s Measures for Administration of Electronic Information Product Pollution Control (China RoHS) and the first wave of ancillary regulations and standards.  Once everyone understood the Phase I labeling requirements, all eyes turned to the issuance of the Key Management Catalogue with Respect [...]

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The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) completed the establishment of its regional supervision centers with the opening of the sixth center, the North China Supervision Center, on December 17, in, strangely, Beijing.  The centers, established over the course of the last several years are:
North China (Beijing)
Northeast China (Shenyang)
Northwest China (Xian)
East China (Nanjing)
South China (Guangzhou)
Southwest China [...]

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In a surprising move, China reduced gasoline and diesel prices at the pump one week before imposing its much publicized increase in the fuel tax.
Xinhua reported that the “benchmark” retail price for fuel, presumably Grade 93 gasoline, was slashed approximately 14% from “6.37 yuan (0.93 U.S. dollar) per litre to 5.46 yuan.”  The wholesale benchmark [...]

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My friend and fellow environmental lawyer, Dayton Carpenter, forwarded me an article that says nothing about, yet speaks volumes, regarding the state of environmental enforcement in China.
Last month in Chongqing, 100+ police investigated 873 suspects over 10 days before issuing warrants for the arrest of two people.  Chongqing’s top communist official, Bo Xilai, “a rising political star [...]

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For today’s reading let me send you over to Climate Progress.  Climate Progress is
dedicated to providing the progressive perspective on climate science, climate solutions, and climate politics. It is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.
It is edited by Joseph Romm, a Senior Fellow at the Center for [...]

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Shanghai’s 4th three-year environmental action plan covers the period 2009-2011 which includes the highly anticipated (at least in Shanghai) Expo 2010 with the motto, “Better City, Better Life.”  It was reported at the conference that Wen Jiabao expects great things for the environment from the exposition: “for Expo 2010 Shanghai, must learn the lessons of [...]

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The Shanghai International Conference on Development and Environment Protection was a truly inspiring event.  As if to underscore the environmental progress Shanghai has over the past several years, the day was sunny and warm.  The conference was held at the old official state guest facilities in Hongqiao where important foreigners and high national officials on [...]

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The Shanghai International Conference on Development and Environmental Protection will be held tomorrow.  As the conference materials provide, the organizers, the Shanghai Municpal Government, will “invite prestigious environmental specialists both from home and abroad to review what Shanghai has done on environment in the past decade and put forward comments for the future.”  Needless to [...]

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Here’s some welcome news. 
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said yesterday it would remove the pricing caps on coal from next year and adopt a market-oriented pricing mechanism.
The caps will be removed sometime in 2009 so that the cost of coal will reflect “the real demand and supply, the resource scarcity and environmental costs [...]

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