ABSTRACT
In 1994, Friends of Nature (FON), an environmental group based in Beijing, became the first non-governmental organization (NGO) to legally register as a social organization, marking the beginning of green activism in China. More importantly, it represented a key moment in the birth of China’s modern civil society, for FON’s success in navigating the demanding registration regulations became a model for other activists across many sectors. Over the past fifteen years, the need for social organizations engaged in environmental work in China has increased, owing to growing environmental pressures and the associated economic and social costs. In response, the Chinese government has acknowledged the severity of environmental problems, passing ever more stringent pollution control laws and devoting financial and rhetorical support to improving environmental protection. The Chinese central government appears to understand its own limitations in addressing environmental problems and has made moves to open limited political space for environmental NGOs. Indeed, green groups are now frequently enlisted by some government agencies to act as “service providers” to address environmental concerns that the agencies are either unwilling or unable to implement. The opening of political space for green activism has not led to the creation of domestic laws to help finance NGO work, which has meant that Chinese green groups are funded almost completely by international organizations and foreign governments. Green NGOs, like civil society groups in other sectors in China, have not had unlimited freedom to operate, yet despite constraints and dependence on international financing, Chinese environmental groups have grown in number and impact. These groups have boasted some real success and have moved into nearly every facet of environmental work, from environmental education to legal advocacy, often in partnership with international NGOs. Because of their relatively long history, early success, and high visibility, environmental NGOs appear in both popular and academic literatures as China’s vanguard of civil society. But have the past fifteen years been as kind to the environmental NGO sector as this characterization suggests? Will the sector be able to sustain itself as a service provider and civil society leader for another
fifteen years? In this chapter, we draw on over a decade of work at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum to inventory and gather information on the green movement in China. We also draw on recent field research in Yunnan Province to explore the current capacity of Chinese environmental NGOs to achieve long-term sustainability for their organization and increase the impact of their social service provision, and the challenges they will face. This chapter begins with a brief sketch of several acute environmental problems in China and the costs of degradation that have compelled the government to adopt more aggressive pollution control and natural resource protection policies, and to include green groups in its efforts to combat environmental problems. It continues with a summary of the different kinds of work in which environmental groups are engaged and then reassesses the state of environmental NGOs (ENGOs) in China by outlining several key issues that have proven problematic for the continued development of such groups: funding, registration, cooperation, and local government pressure due to China’s political decentralization. Finally, to provide an understanding of the scale of the difficulties facing green groups in China, we offer the case of Yunnan, a province with high ecological biodiversity and a government that prioritizes environmental protection and welcomes many international green aid projects. Yunnan should be an ideal political environment for green NGO growth, and yet groups there continue to struggle to build sustainable organizations. Ultimately, this chapter suggests that local governments retain control and collaborate with NGOs only when they are useful.
