ABSTRACT
Voluntary environmental organizations are very active when it comes to developing activities aimed at raising the consciousness of the population concerning garbage disposal, garbage classification and separation, and the benefits these activities have for improving the living environment. International organizations like Greenpeace International and domestic ones such as Friends of Nature, Green Beagle, and (many) others are taking the lead in these fields in urban China. All non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have to fight a battle on two fronts, particularly when they concern themselves with causes that can be construed as having a political impact. As environment-related causes tend to be intimately linked with political concerns, this also applies to those NGOs that are working in the field of the environment (ENGOs). Aside from encountering interference while engaging in their core business of educational and activist work, they also face continuous and stiff obstruction from official quarters to be active at all. The Chinese party-state considers organizations like NGOs as a threat to its existence and monopoly on power. This seems to make the work of these organizations extremely difficult, but practice has shown that many of them have still found ways to engage in relevant action. NGOs generally need to work in the background as much as they can; they must try and avoid too much publicity for their actions; they must ensure that their activities carry no political implications; they have to arrange for financial resources while avoiding funding from abroad, etc. At the same time and despite such constraints, some NGOs are able to successfully negotiate the divide between the people and the political system. Some are even appreciated by that system, albeit incidentally and grudgingly, for their contributions (Lu, 2007; Salmenkari, 2008; Wu and Chan, 2012; Johnson, 2013a; Kostka, 2014; Teets, 2014). As Dai and Spires conclude, over time some ENGOs have been able to carve out a position ‘as watchdogs to government policies, calling for implementation of existing regulations, critiquing and campaigning against undesirable policies, and exerting pressure on government to solve environmental problems’ (2017: 63). Others have provided invaluable assistance in the implementation of government initiatives by going into communities, linking up with the residents, and mobilizing support – activities that the government bodies are not able or willing to do.
