China Environmental Law

Now here’s something that could really make a difference.  China Daily reports that the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning (CAEP) is “mulling a plan to assess provincial environmental performances.”  The plan being considered is the Environmental Performances Index (EPI).
As we have previously noted, China has set performance criteria for local officials which considers how well [...]

[Read more →]

So what did you miss last week?  Not much.
Like the swallows to Capistrano
Beijing’s air quality seemed to return to pre-Olympian-effort murkiness or was it just another attack of haze?  No obfuscation this time, Xinhua calls it as it sees it: “smog.”
The reappearance of the smog was blamed on such factors as the lifting of some provisional [...]

[Read more →]

 
It was busy Sunday here at CELB.  I upgraded to the latest WordPress version (despite the bewilderingly complex instructions, it was actually quite simple and flawless), added a plugin to ward off the huge volume of spam comments I was getting (you shouldn’t notice this change unless you’re not running JavaScripts, and then you may [...]

[Read more →]

Its time for a little R&R and fall cleaning.  I’m going to be taking a little breather during the National Day holiday.  I hope to have some time to cleanup and add to my blogroll (a long overdue task), attend to email correspondence, and install a plug-in or two to add more features to the site.  Don’t [...]

[Read more →]

The balance of the year seems to be chock full of cleantech conferences, forums, and symposia. What money there is left out there seems to be chasing cleantech deals, and every budding entrepreneur is preparing a business plan for a new product or service.  I’m not complaining mind you.  It’s good for business here at [...]

[Read more →]

For those of you keeping score at home, the first half SO2 and COD numbers were released earlier this month.  Compared with the first six months of 2007, the following reductions were achieved for the comparable period of 2008:
SO2:  3.96%
COD: 2.48%
Zhou Shengxian, the Minister for Environmental Protection said
the good momentum that discharge of both major [...]

[Read more →]

Kunming continues to make environmental news.  According to China .org.cn ”[h]igh accumulations of arsenic have caused severe water pollution in Yangzonghai Lake, Kunming City.”  Fishing and swimming have been banned in the Lake and an emergency plan to provide safe drinking water to the nearly 30,000 people who rely on the Lake as their drinking water [...]

[Read more →]

Kunming, capital of southwestern China’s Yunnan Province, has submitted a plan to City officials for the approval of a specialized court to handle environment-related lawsuits.  China Radio International reports that it will be a “trial” court, but the description of the court says that it
will be part of the city’s intermediate people’s court and will have [...]

[Read more →]

What to make of the conflicting signals in the press regarding China’s stance during the next round of climate change negotiations?At the beginning of the month Reuters reported that
Hu Angang, a public policy professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, warned failure to act could doom global climate change talks.
In submissions to leaders and a recent essay, Hu has [...]

[Read more →]

The awards keep rolling in here at CELB.  This time it’s the Shanghai government’s Magnolia Award, which is the highest honor bestowed by the City on foreigners who have “contributed significantly to Shanghai’s economic performance, international relations, business environment, management standards and community development.”  That’s CELB’s contribution in a nutshell, but truth be told, I [...]

[Read more →]