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Tag Archives: friends of nature

Farewell to Liang Congjie, founder of China’s first environmental NGO

This blog is co-authored with Barbara Finamore.

This past week Liang Congjie, one of the founders of Friends of Nature (FON) and the godfather of China’s environmental movement, passed away. The establishment in 1994 of FON, China’s first legally registered environmental group, paved the way for the creation of more than 3,000 registered, and many more unregistered, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China today.
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Recent Environmental Law and Public Participation News

Nine ministries unite to tackle heavy metal pollution (Google translation) At a April 9 conference on public health and environmental protection, Environment minister Zhou Shengxian stressed that addressing and remediation heavy metal pollution would be the top environmental task of the year. Nine ministries and commissions will focus on heavy metal prevention this year, he announced. Among the policies that have gone into effect already include a telephone hotline for citizens wishing to report heavy metal pollution, which has already collected information on 82 incidents. Zhou also revealed that 32 mass incidents across the country have been linked to heavy … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(0)

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The 2010 Annual Report on China's Environment: Friends of Nature's China Green Book

Last Friday, Beijing-based NGO Friends of Nature (En) released its Annual Report on China’s Environment and Development 2010, a collection of articles from some of China’s top environmental groups, legal and environmental scholars, and journalists.  FON has published an annual Green Book since 2006 and this has become the definitive account of the top issues in environmental protection each year since. The “2010 Green Book” includes a chronology of major environmental incidents and events in 2009, as well as 27 articles on environmental health, the handling of municipal waste, sustainable consumption, pollution, ecological protection, and environmental policy. As one commentary … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(1)

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One Year of Openness: Greenlaw and the First Anniversary of China’s Open Information Regulations

NRDC’s revamped Greenlaw (www.greenlaw.org.cn) site officially debuted on October 5th, 2008. The overall positive response to the “Open Environmental Information Regulations (Trial)” since May 1st, 2008 has played an important role in the creation of the site. The update rate of the old Greenlaw site was not up to the task of quickly dealing with new environmental law and open information developments, so revisions to the site were made in addition to continuing the original news service. Since February, the amount of writing on the site has rapidly increased, and the site has switched from its original schedule of 2-3 … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(0)

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The New Mountains and Water

Last weekend over the Qing Ming Festival holiday, I happened across an excellent series of photos by the Chinese photographer Yao Lu (姚璐) at the 798 Photo Gallery. I had first been introduced to Yao Lu’s work by my friend Li Bo, head of China’s first environmental NGO Friends of Nature (English link). Yao’s work made a deep impression on me at that time, but I’d lost track of the photos and could not remember who had done the work. So I was happy to stumble across them again at 798. The photos are surprising because, from afar, they look … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(0)

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Public participation drives environmental review of Gold East Paper

On March 2 2009, the website of Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) posted the “Re-notification of Environmental Review for the Initial Public Offering of Gold East Paper (Jiangsu) Co.,Ltd.” The notification points out that last August, six environmental groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of Nature, reported the environmental problems of Gold East Paper, a member company of the Sinar Mas APP Group, which was planning to be listed on the A-Share market. Environmental offices in Hainan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces then verified the reported problems, so the issue was notified here again for ten days. This move was immediately applauded … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(0)

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Environmental NGO calls for close oversight of 4 trillion RMB stimulus funds

During the 2009 NPC and CPPCC annual session, environmental NGOS expressed a high level of concern towards the Chinese government’s 4 trillion RMB stimulus plan, pointing out that the implementation of the economic stimulus should not sacrifice the long-term objectives of environmental protection and energy conservation. On March 9, the Social Sciences Academic Press published the 2009 edition of their China Environmental Green Book, titled “Annual Report on Environmental Development of China (2009),” which consists of works and writings compiled by the Beijing-based environmental NGO Friends of Nature. At the same time, Li Bo, the director of Friends of Nature, … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(1)

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Environmental NGOs to sponsor major environmental forum in Beijing (Oct. 30-31, 2008)

The 2008 China Environmental NGO Sustainable Development Forum will be held in Beijing from October 30 to 31 by the All-China Environment Federation (ACEF), and co-organized by NRDC and several other NGOs in China. The theme for this year is “Promoting Public Participation, Establishing Low Carbon Economy.” As a co-organizer, NRDC is organizing and moderating a panel on “ Environmental Protection and Public Participation” that will highlight ways the public and environmental groups can utilize environmental information to protect China’s environment. The annual Forum is the largest annual gathering of environmental NGOs in China, with an anticipated 400 participants from … Continue reading 阅读全文 » Add comment 发表评论(2)

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