China Environmental Law

I spent my morning at a workshop hosted by Shanghai’s Environmentally Friendly City Initiative.  I was attending as a representative of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham Shanghai) so let me report with that hat on.

There were presentations by the head of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau (SEPB), and representatives of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE), and ArcelorMittal (which has donated a large chunk of the money to fund the effort). 

What they are looking for at this point is companies or NGO’s to suggest and fund pilot projects (please see my caveats about pilot projects here).  The projects should be able to fit into one of the following seven broad areas:

1. Green Expo 2010 (this category will cover just about anything)
2. Green Commuting (the good folks at the Environmental Defense Fund are bringing their cleaner bus project which was rolled out during the Olympics to Shanghai, but there may still be opportunities here)
3. Environmentally friendly district (this one appears the most wide-open at this point)
4. Eco-agriculture and wet land development (preservation of tidal marshes on Chongming Island will be part of this project)
5. Methane Recovery Project (this was not discussed in detail, but I assume the only methane Shanghai has to recover is from its landfills)
6. Pilot project on cleaner production/energy conservation/circular economy (one project in this category is on tap for the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park (SCIP))
7. Green Community (this includes measures to raise public awareness of environmental issues)

The other outreach item concerns “sister city” initiatives.  Shanghai will host a major “sister city” forum in early 2010 to discuss environmental issues in the urban environment.  Shanghai is a “sister city” to San Francisco and Chicago in the US, but formal “sister city” arrangements are apparently not necessary to get involved.  A Director of SEPB mentioned that they had recently signed an MOU with Houston. 

Want to get your company or city involved?

An Initiative website ( http://www.efc.sh.cn/ ) is coming soon, but its not up yet.