1. Environmental Information Disclosure and Public
E i t lI f ti Di l d P bli
Participation in Lake Tai Basin: Evidence of Yixing
Junjie Ge
CEMP, NJU
January 14 2010
14,

2. Why conduct this research?
y
 Command and control instruments and economic policies
could not solve all the environmental problems, public
participation based on environmental information
ti i ti b d i t li f ti
disclosure seems more urgent than before
 Pilot
Pil research supported b the W ld Bank and CEPA
h d by h World B k d
from 2006, three cities in Jiangsu Province included
 Funded by National Water Project：financial and
d db i l j fi i l d
political support
 Cooperative research with IDE, JETRO, Japan
i h ih

3. The Location of Yixing —— Upper Lake Tai

4. Why choose Yixing?
y g
 In the upper reaches of Lake Tai man ri ers from
pper Tai: many rivers
here run down to Lake Tai
 Environmental sensitive areas: punishment
in the crisis of 2007
 High pollution load：population, industry, agriculture
 Great progress was made including environmental
protection: elected as one of the ten most happiness
counties of China in 2009

5. Process of our research
December 3，2008, pilot meeting in Yixing
Economic Development Zone

6. Fill in the questionnaire

7. January 8, 2009, review of the pilot meeting

8. July,
July 2009: Field and questionnaire survey in Yixing

9. August 6，2009：the first roundtable meeting in a company’s
meeting-room

10. Futures of the first meeting:
g
 Executives of the enterprises actively participate
in the meeting
 Positive interacting between the representatives of
enterprises and government: most of time enterprises asked
time,
government for looser environmental regulation
 Consensus attained formally in the meeting
driven by the experts

11. Deficiency of the first meeting
y g
 Most people are leaders of the villages
 Representatives of the public did not express their
opinion fully and freely for some reason
 Media did not play an important role in the
meeting
g

12. Reasons analysis
y
 Insufficient arrangements before the meeting，
especially selecting and training the public
 Presence of higher level officials makes the
public have hesitation to tell local environmental
issues
 Without
With t enough communications among the
h i ti th
public, government and enterprises

13. December 8,2009:the second meeting in the community meeting roon

14. Futures of the second meeting
g
 Warm communications and rebuttals among the public,
W i ti d b tt l th bli
enterprises and government
 Active responses of the government and enterprises to
the environmental problems
 Free and enough expression of the public
 Fair attitude of the government
 Local media attended and reported the meeting

15. Deficiency of the second meeting
y g
 No effective consensus attained
 Difficult to supervise the promise of the
government and enterprises without constitutional
aid such as the information disclosure

16. Reasons analysis
y
 Selecting and training of the public before the
meeting, encourage them to deliver their own voice
 Make certain the topics of the meeting with the
help of the local government and inform the
relevant enterprises in advance
 Local
L l government do not really want to solve the
td t ll tt l th
environmental problems by the public participation

17. Q
Questionnaire survey results analysis
y y
 280 questionnaires data were checked and
input

27. Chart 10 Difficulties of environmental public participation
Lack of practical results 33%
Without others’ support
pp 29%
%
Insufficiency of professional knowledge 35%
Lower organized level of the public 51%
Lack of environmental information 52%
Without support of the government 57%

28. Chart 11 Key factor of environmental cooperation
NGO media
and experts Government
33% 36%
Public
13% Enterprises
18%

30. Chart 13 Factor of promoting the environmental public participation
Economic encouragement
E i t 31%
Legal support and judicial relief 40%
Aid of NGO, media and experts 53%
Identity and support of the residents 55%
Support of the government 80%

31. Brief conclusion
 High demand of the public environmental
appeal
 Unsatisfied status of environmental
information disclosure both of enterprises and
government
 Weak conscio sness of the go ernment on
consciousness government
environmental public participation
 Government is the key facor

32. Policy proposal
yp p
 Policy-level
Start up and strengthen legislation of environmental
public participation as well as i f
bli ti i ti ll information di l
ti disclosure
 Organization-level
Define the
D fi th sector responsible f th environmental
t ibl for the i t l
information disclosure and public participation, establish
relative working program
 Operation-level
Improve environmental information disclosure by
internet, construct the path for public participation such
as environmental roundtable meeting g

33. Thank you
y
GE Junjie
J ji
gejj@nju.edu.cn
g jj@ j