China: Grassroots Green Groups Grow

The All-China Environment Federation has released a report stating China's grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGO) dedicated to environment protection have doubled their numbers in the past three years

A recently released report shows that China's grassroot non-governmental organizations (NGO) dedicated to environment protection have doubled their numbers in the past three years. The government-sponsored All-China Environment Federation released its annual report last week on domestic non-governmental organization (NGO) activity, There are 508 grassroot-level environment NGOs in China as of October this year.This has increased by nearly 300 from 2005, the All-China Environment Federation said in an environment report here, which it took eight months to finish beginning January this year. Yi Yimin, a press officer with the Beijing-based Friends of Nature, an environment NGO said "For example, we together with other groups advocated the '26-degree air conditioning office' among the public, which later became a government regulation that air-conditioned public rooms should be kept at no lower than 26 degrees Celsius in summer." There are 3,539 environment NGOs in the country, including government-sponsored ones, grassroot ones, branches of international organizations as well as school environment societies. The figure jumped by 771 from three years ago. The report states 55.2 percent of the NGOs now have their own offices, up 15.2 percent from 2005; while 26 percent have fixed source of investment, up 2.1 percent. Most environment NGOs have some problems such as raising money, shortage in personnel and weak organization ability in their development process, the report said. The organizations have, since 2005, played a more active role in influencing the government's policy making, supervising the government's task of environment responsibility and raising public awareness in environment protection, it said. The survey found 58.6 percent of the organizations were involved in the energy saving and emission cutting work, and 11 percent participated in protecting people's rights concerning environment protection.