China Environmental Law

There were several noteworthy environmental stories over the weekend.  Here’s a quick look:

Equator Principles

China’s Industrial Bank has announced that it will become the first Chinese bank to adopt the Equator Principles (EPs).  The EPs require that signatory banks “take into account environmental and social issues when financing development projects.” 

According to the EPs Preamble

negative impacts on project-affected ecosystems and communities should be avoided where possible, and if these impacts are unavoidable, they should be reduced, mitigated and/or compensated for appropriately.

The EPs only apply to projects with capital cost over $10 million, and such projects only constitute “a very small” part of the bank’s total investment portfolio said Li Renjie, president of the Industrial Bank.  Thus, “the bank’s profit margin would not be affected.”  In fact, Mr Li said that the bank could actually “avoid potential losses” as a result of its adoption of the EPs because they would prevent loans to projects “that may be stopped due to breach of environmental laws and regulations.”

Industrial Bank’s move was hailed by the World Bank and “Chinese authorities will encourage more banks to adopt the principles to promote the country’s ‘green’ credit program, said Yang Chaofei, head of the policy, law and regulations department at the Ministry of Environmental Protection.”

More Chinese Environmental NGOs

The All-China Environment Federation has issued a report that reviews the growth and influence of China’s Environmental NGOs.

Here are the statistical highlights:

• China has 3,539 environment NGOs, including “government-sponsored ones, grassroot ones, branches of international organizations as well as school environment societies,” up 771 from three years ago;
• China has 508 grassroot-level environment NGOs, up nearly 300 from 2005;
• 55.2 percent of the NGOs now have their own offices (up 15.2 percent from 2005);
• 26 percent have fixed source of investment (up 2.1 percent from 2005);
• 58.6 percent of the organizations were involved in the energy saving and emission cutting work;
• 11 percent participated in protecting people’s rights concerning environment protection.

Ah but numbers can be deceiving, “most environment NGOs still face problems including difficulty in raising money, shortage in personnel and weak organization ability in their development process, the report said.”  Most of these problems are exacerbated if not actually caused by government restrictions on “NGOs” in China.

Still, let’s be thankful for what those that persevere have accomplished. 

Yi Yimin, a press officer with the Beijing-based Friends of Nature, an environment NGO, told Xinhua her organization has successfully influenced the public and the government policy by advocating environment-friendly practice in the past few years.

“For example, we together with other groups advocated the ‘26-degree air conditioning office’ among the public, which later became a government regulation that air-conditioned public rooms should be kept at no lower than 26 degrees Celsius in summer,” she said.

It’s a start.

One Bad Apple?

It appears Wang Panpu, the former secretary-general and legal representative of the China Environmental Culture Promotion Association (CECPA) may have had his hand in the cookie jar.  Caijing.com reports that Mr. Wang is being investigated by the Beijing municipal committee discipline inspection department of the Communist Party “in connection with the association’s financial problems.” 

Wang allegedly set up a “private fund” to divert public money, and illegally asked for “sponsorship” from companies in the name of a government body that carries out environmental evaluations.

Watch this one folks.  There may be bigger fish caught in this net.