The Great Proletariat Revolution, which led to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, was designed to rid the country of inequities that existed for over 2,000 years of dynastic rule. Mao Zedong envisioned building a strong, egalitarian utopia to benefit the country's downtrodden peasants and workers. While this "utopia" was rocked with disastrous political and development campaigns, the centrally planned economy with guaranteed jobs for urbanites and some subsidies for rural agriculture brought some economic equality to China—today many joke that under Mao's rule everyone was equally poor. When Deng Xiaoping launched reforms to revitalize China's economy in 1979, he, like Mao, wished to make China strong and stable. While his reforms, and those continued by his successors, have fueled a booming economy, the growth has left many behind—coastal regions flourish, but inland areas have stagnant economies; urban centers are beginning to resemble modern Western metropolises, whereas many rural inland areas are still as bucolic as 30 years ago. The government has attempted to address this widespread economic inequality through policies and campaigns to offer relief for those who have "fallen behind" in the economic boom. Stimulating more economic growth in the inland regions and rebuilding new social safety nets have been central strategies for poverty alleviation.

Another "inequality" stemming from China's long economic boom has been the asymmetrical impact of environmental degradation on certain regions and sectors of the population. The government has responded to serious environmental problems by strengthening previous pollution control and conservation legislation and welcoming international assistance to help solve some of the country's more intractable environmental problems. Paralleling the growth in international environmental nongovernmental organization (NGO) projects in China has been an explosion of domestic green groups. Ultimately, the success of these laws, investments, and activism to mitigate China's environmental problems will depend on whether they give all stakeholders a voice in designing and implementing the solutions.

In 2003, the China Environment Forum, University of Maryland, and University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) joined together in the Tamaki Environmental Project, in which environmental experts from China, Germany, Japan, and the United States have been exploring the myriad issues associated with environmental equity in China. The research presented at these workshops (to be published in an upcoming book) focused primarily on issues relating to participatory equity (Who has an opportunity to voice their concerns about environmental problems in China?) and procedural equity (What are the institutions and processes that grant or limit access to environmental decision-making?). In addition to examining whether citizens are empowered to voice concern or influence the policy process regarding environmental threats, some participants in this project are investigating issues of regional environmental inequities in China.

At a pair of meetings held at the Woodrow Wilson Center, speakers discussed issues crucial to understanding the complexities of equity and China's environment: Jennifer Turner and Timothy Hildebrandt outlined legal opportunities and impediments for pollution victims to access information and pursue justice; Anna Brettell offered a look at options for citizens to voice pollution complaints and to be heard in the courts; Li Lailai discussed the growing role of the domestic NGO community to assure greater participatory equity; Fengshi Wu presented the unique role of government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) in enabling greater voice in shaping environmental policies; Wen Bo spoke about the currently small, yet important activities of community groups throughout China to spark grassroots activism; Aster Zhang discussed the regional inequities through the lens of conflicts between animal protection and poverty alleviation; and Andreas Oberheitman offered evidence of growing environmental inequities among different regions in energy use and production.

Legislative Obstacles and Opportunities

When Wen Bo began his career in environmental activism thirteen years ago, he was detained by police for simply posting a sign on a college campus in celebration of Earth Day. The political space for environmental activism has grown considerably since those days. Despite onerous registration requirements, green NGOs have cropped up throughout the country, a symptom of China's growing environmental problems and the great number of citizens willing to engage in the taxing work to resolve them. Even some environmental GONGOs have undertaken somewhat activist roles. There are, however, small informal green groups that are unconstrained by government regulation. Their unique "under the radar" existence enables small informal groups to play a significant role in assuring participatory equity for even more Chinese citizens than perhaps the NGO and GONGO groups combined.
Surprisingly, nature clubs are among the more influential informal groups. Though they might begin as a rather benign crowd of birdwatchers, as environmental degradation negatively impacts their hobby, nature groups around China have mobilized and engaged in work akin to larger, better organized Chinese NGOs. Wen Bo presented a recent example of a Shanghai nature club that, in 2002, began to protest the planned development of a local wetland. The club informed the local news media of the imminent destruction of the wetland that was the habitat for many local and migrating birds. Club members constructed a Web site to inform the public about the development and instances of corruption involved in the project. In the end, influential government officials were pressured into canceling the development altogether thus saving the wetland from destruction.

According to Wen Bo, the Internet plays a key role in the work of many informal environmental groups in China. Web sites help groups circumvent the sometimes restrictive registration laws to which NGOs are beholden. The unregistered status of "Netizen" groups precludes the possibility of formally recruiting members. But by recruiting members through the Web site as simply "Web users" and asking for "donations," the groups are able to, in effect, act just like a registered NGO. Notably, registered NGOs are prohibited from forming branch offices in other cities, however Netizen groups can spread their message throughout the country.

Greener Beijing is the largest of these Internet groups, which has established itself as one of the most effective pressure groups in China. Notably, in 2001 television advertisements touting the medicinal benefits of consuming a rare species of turtle began to crop up on Hainan Island television stations. Though well over 1,000 miles from this Internet group's Beijing home, through its Web site Greener Beijing was able to spread the message to Web users throughout China to inform each other about the advertisements on Hainan. In chat rooms and Internet bulletin boards, word spread quickly and many members within the Greener Beijing network began to call the Hainan television station and government officials. Due to their efforts, the ads were pulled off the air.

These small informal groups can be very dynamic, using creative means to register, recruit members, raise funds, and perform work. By becoming a vehicle for individuals to air grievances and pressure local governments, informal organizations are providing a great number of Chinese citizens the opportunity to get involved and participate in the environmental policy process. These small groups do face the challenge of operating on a small budget and relying solely on volunteers. Lacking the legal status of formal groups, securing financial support is also quite difficult. Ideally, many of these groups would prefer to be registered, but the current legal framework for registration is an impediment.

Big But Vulnerable—Elephant Protection and Poverty Alleviation Conundrum

Aster Zhang's profile of the clash of growing human populations invading natural habitat and threatening animal species underlined how environmental inequities may very well be a bigger issue in China's rural areas than the cities. The Asian elephant is just one such species under threat of extinction by population pressures in southwest China. The original forest habitat for Asian elephants that once helped the species thrive, has been developed for agriculture or destroyed by the logging industry. Over the past fifty years, Asian elephant numbers have dwindled considerably as the habitat has been destroyed and its population fragmented. Some elephants have begun to, in effect, fight this encroachment.

Zhang took part in a study in Yunnan province that found elephant damage to crops and homes accounts for almost 20 to 50 percent of the average farmer's 150 USD annual income; additionally, over five years twelve people in the research area lost their lives to elephants. Retaliation against elephants have in turn led to two elephant deaths in one year; though illegal, growing demand in the ivory market caused the death of 16 elephant in 1996.

The economic and environmental implications of the elephant-human conflict are examples of overlapping regional inequities—unlike their east coast counterparts, poor farmers in southwest China lack access to markets and must often rely on subsistence farming. In addition to lacking economic opportunities these areas receive much less government investment for development and resource protection. Notably, an international NGO—International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)—joined with Chinese researchers and local governments and communities to create a project aimed at correcting these economic and environmental inequities and assure that elephants and humans can live and prosper together, without conflict. Launched in 1999, this IFAW-led project first conducted surveys of the local economy, society and natural habitat to identify the key problems. This survey information enabled IFAW to design a three-pronged problem-solving approach: (1) provide scientific data for a "conservation corridor" design, (2) execute a community development project to support alternative eco-friendly economic activities, and (3) set up environmental education activities to help the communities understand the needs of the elephants.

Simao was the site of one particularly successful community development initiative in which IFAW created a micro-credit project involving groups of several families that organized themselves to secure $100 to $200 seed money. The money was used for development projects that provided steady income for the families, but did not threaten forest resources. Zhang reported that 98 percent of the village's families participated in the project. Two years into the project, $40,000 was distributed to 370 households; the rate of return was nearly 100 percent and the projects sparked a marked increase in the standard of living in the area. The economic success for the humans brought a windfall for the elephants in that a significant amount of land was been returned to its natural state. Zhang noted that rural people have the right for development, just as their urban counterparts. But the rural development needs to be kept in check, for if the local ecosystem is destroyed humans and animals alike will have no future.

Energizing Economies and Fueling Inequities

Regional economic inequity in China has become more extreme over the past twenty years—coastal regions boast a relatively high GDP, while revenues are markedly lower throughout the rest of the country. Similarly, there are great regional disparities in energy use with the east using much more than inland China. Andreas Oberheitman contended that because of differences in energy use, China also has great regional disparities in SO2 emissions. The highest emissions levels are found in well-developed areas, on the eastern and southern coasts of the country, as well as in some less developed poorer inland provinces like Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Anhui. These high pollution emission areas account for nearly two-thirds of China's total 240 million tons of SO2 annually.

Pollution from energy is not, however, limited to poor air quality in these areas. Oberheitman asserted that though the highest demand for energy comes from coastal areas, the primary energy source, coal, is located in underdeveloped inland areas. These high-energy use provinces must import fossil energy from across the country, putting a tremendous demand on China's weak transport infrastructure. Moving coal is a costly venture. In 2001, the total rail freight traffic of fossil fuels was nearly 700 billion tons; the average distance to transport this energy source was 555 kilometers, costing roughly 20 billion USD. Such long-distance coal transportation has led to an unintended, perhaps ironic, consequence—great amounts of energy are exhausted for the sheer purpose of transporting energy. Oberheitman explained that in some cases when all energy use is taken into account, it takes as much energy to move the coal as the energy it later produces. In addition to the costs of transportation, the environmental costs of mining the coal are borne more heavily by the exporting provinces. The costs of cleaning up these environmental externalities are not built into the sale of coal, for prices are kept low by government subsidies.

Oberheitman suggested several strategies that might lower China's dependence upon high sulfur coal for energy. The government has already made an effort through the "Go West" program to encourage better income distribution across China, which Oberheitman views as an opportunity to increase investment in energy-efficient technologies or renewable energy sources such as nuclear, wind, or solar energy. To deal with the high-energy use needed to transport energy, the government should reduce freight traffic and improve the overall transportation infrastructure.

But even if the government was interested in these strategies to lessen energy inequalities, the high costs may prove too prohibitive. Arguably only the economically developed coastal regions will be able to implement new low polluting energy options, while the poor inland areas will likely continue to rely on highly polluting fossil fuels and coal as they develop. New energy strategies for these regions must be more practical. Oberheitman suggested that washed coal could lessen the negative impact on the environment and bring down energy costs. This process minimizes the fuel's weight, making energy use and cost of transportation lower. Moreover, washing the coal significantly reduces sulfur levels, making it a less polluting energy source. While coal washing lessens the air pollution problems, it requires large amounts of water, a commodity that is in short supply in many regions of the country. The regional disparities surrounding energy production, transportation, and use are admittedly challenging, but must be dealt with in the long run if the Chinese government wishes to fully succeed in promoting economic and environmental equity in the China

The Tamaki Environmental Project continues beyond this series of meetings. The participants in these meetings have been joined by other environmental experts to contribute chapters to a comprehensive volume that will address many different issues relating to environmental equity in China. The Tamaki Foundation has generously funded these meetings at the Wilson Center, a summer conference in Germany, and the upcoming book. For more information on this initiative contact Jennifer Turneror Miranda Schreurs at the University of Maryland.

Drafted by Timothy Hildebrandt and Jennifer L. Turner.