HONG
KONG - A stubborn group of fish farmers in eastern
China's Zhejiang province has struck a blow for
both the environment and rule of law in the
country, leaving analysts to speculate on the
promising long-term implications of their case.
The 82 farmers, who have been fighting for
years to have authorities investigate the
pollution of their fish ponds by the 2,000
factories operating in the municipality of
Wenzhou, last week won a landmark ruling against
provincial police in a local court. The farmers
allege that between 2003 and 2004, pollution from
factories in the Wenzhou
industrial zone caused 170 million yuan (nearly
US$21.8 million) in damages to more than 367
hectares of fish ponds.
The Shangchen
District Court in Hangzhou ordered Zhejiang police
authorities to determine why the Wenzhou Public
Security Bureau did not act on the farmers'
complaints.
While the ultimate resolution
of the case is unknown, it has already made
Chinese legal history in that a local court has
ruled against a provincial authority. China's big
problem with implementing reform - environmental
and otherwise - has been that local and provincial
officials have often acted in cahoots to subvert
central-government edicts that they did not
perceive to be in their economic interests.
If in Wenzhou the factory owners are
ultimately ordered to compensate the farmers for
their loss, the case will stand out as an
exception to that rule. It may also signal a new
era of environmental awareness among ordinary
citizens.
Actually, the Shangchen ruling
is just the latest legal victory for the farmers,
who since the beginning of their protracted ordeal
have pursued whoever has passed the buck of
responsibility for the damage to their ponds.
First, the farmers took their complaints
to the Zhejiang Environmental Protection Bureau,
where they were ignored. Under the provisions of
the Administrative Reconsideration Law, enacted in
1999, they then asked the State Environmental
Protection Administration (SEPA), an arm of the
central government, to intervene. But the agency
also turned a blind eye to the farmers' plight.
In September 2005, the farmers took the
bold step of suing the environmental watchdog in
Beijing Intermediate People's Court, asking the
court to force SEPA to act on their complaint.
Last June, the court ruled in their favor, and
SEPA then ordered the Zhejiang environmental
bureau to investigate the farmers' claims.
In the meantime, however, because the
farmers' ponds were so badly polluted, the
leaseholder of the land on which they were located
had ordered their destruction. At that point, the
farmers asked the Wenzhou police for protection.
Again, they were ignored.
Finally, the
farmers went to the Zhejiang Public Security
Bureau for help. After the bureau also failed to
respond, they filed the suit that they won last
week in Hangzhou.
The obvious moral to the
story is that persistence pays off, but legal
experts also wonder whether the farmers' victory
is an isolated case or marks a turning point for
the rule of law in China. And environmentalists
hope that the ruling heralds a new era of citizen
activism to promote a cleanup of the country's
environment, which has been devastated by nearly
30 years of breakneck economic growth.
SEPA is supposed to play the leading
national role in protecting the country's
environment, but under the agency's ineffectual
stewardship, China's blue skies have turned almost
perpetually gray and 70% of the country's rivers
have been polluted. By SEPA's own admission,
pollution costs the Chinese economy $200 billion a
year, or 10% of its gross domestic product (GDP).
After a particularly egregious
environmental accident in November 2005 - a
chemical spill in the Songhua River in the
northeastern province of Jilin that forced
officials to cut off the water supply to 3.8
million people in the city of Harbin and also set
off alarm bells across the Russian border - then
SEPA head Xie Zhenhua was forced to resign.
Not only did the spill from a
petrochemical plant produce a toxic slick 85
kilometers long, but local officials did their
best to cover up the disaster, claiming the city's
water supply had been turned off so that faulty
pipes could be repaired. Skeptical journalists,
however, exposed the fraud.
In the wake of
the Jilin fiasco, Zhou Shengxian took over as SEPA
boss, promising a tougher approach toward
polluters. And indeed, under Zhou, SEPA has issued
a raft of new regulations and set up a national
network of 11 environmental monitors whose mandate
is to monitor local conditions and report directly
to SEPA, bypassing self-serving, often corrupt
provincial officials.
For the first time,
Zhou has tied a cleaner environment to China's
GDP, saying: "Now we have entered a stage where
we'll try to use environmental-protection measures
to boost economic growth." He has also vowed to
punish local cadres who allow the environment to
be despoiled for the sake of profit.
"We'll take into account the handling of
environmental issues," he said shortly after
taking over the agency, "in the evaluation of
local officials. Those who fail to meet
requirements will pay the price for turning a
blind eye to the law."
The tougher new
stance was in evidence just this week when SEPA
deputy director Pan Yue halted approval for 82
industrial projects in 22 provinces and
municipalities unless immediate action is taken to
meet SEPA requirements. The projects are valued at
$14.3 billion.
Pan also promised that
officials responsible for the violations will be
disciplined, saying: "It is the first time since
the establishment of [SEPA] that such penalties
have been meted out to punish those administrative
regions, industries or large enterprises."
This clearly was not the prevailing
attitude at SEPA when the Wenzhou fish farmers
came to the agency for assistance - not, that is,
until for the first time a court forced the
watchdog's hand. Until then, responsibility for
redressing the farmers' grievances had been passed
from Wenzhou city officials to provincial
authorities to SEPA and back again.
The
farmers' legal victory over SEPA compelled the
agency to intervene, and their latest triumph
should force provincial authorities to act. But
the farmers are hardly home free.
Questions remain: Will fines imposed on
the factories provide adequate or merely token
compensation for the farmers? And will these
factories be required to build and maintain a
sewage-treatment plant so that such wholesale
pollution cannot occur again in the Wenzhou
development zone?
While the Wenzhou story
is promising, so far it remains a promise
unfulfilled.
Kent Ewing is a
teacher and writer at Hong Kong International
School. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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