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Friday, 12/21/2007 11:41:56 AM

Friday, December 21, 2007 11:41:56 AM

Beijing Express**
And who says they don't drink bottled water in China??
http://thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?file=/2007/12/16/columnists/beijingexpress/20071216101855&sec=Beijing%20Express

Empowered to blacklist those who pollute

BEIJING EXPRESS
By CELESTE FONG

TWENTY years ago, who in China would have thought they would be paying for bottled drinking water? Well, these days, it is very much a part of urban life.

Foreigners and locals alike living in the Chinese capital are paying for bottled-water and will not even drink boiled tap water.

The white residue at the bottom of the kettle is probably quite a turn-off.

The subject cropped up over dinner with a new friend who was in town for a zoology conference recently.

As we exchanged news and stories on environment and pollution, he told me and my friend about his past involvement in writing plays on environmental protection.

Powerful voice: Ma speaking during a press conference at the launch of the online China Air Pollution Map in Hong Kong on Thursday. The map points out the worst polluters in southern China and Hong Kong. — AFP
One of his plays was translated and used to teach children about the importance of protecting Mother Earth and how precious water is, he said.

“I learnt that Russia and Canada are the only two developed nations without a water shortage problem,” I told my friends.

I had got the information while attending a talk on the China Air Pollution Map.

The speaker was Ma Jun, a journalist turned environmental advocate who is now a powerful voice for the budding green movement in China.

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPEA), which he founded, has come out with an online China Water Pollution Map (http://www.ipe.org.cn/english/index.jsp) that names and shames companies that pollute the waters in the country.

His clout is such that executives from multinational corporations would knock on his door to explain themselves!

“Some of them knocked on our doors and wanted their names removed from the map,” he related.

“We told them to accept an environmental audit from a third party and act on their problems.

“So far 50 companies in the water pollution list have made the initiative to contact us and all of them are multinationals willing to accept third party audit.”

Ma said one foreign company admitted to him that their bank had stopped financing their operations and would only reconsider their loan if their names were taken off the blacklist.

Ma was a little disappointed by the fact that local companies were not truly concerned with being on the list. Only one local company from Wuxi had come forward, he said.

It was, however, a good start for green NGOs like IPEA, which still face a long and laborious journey ahead in combating environmental abuse in China.

Ma has studied government data since 2004 to produce another map, the China Air Pollution Map (http://air.ipe.org.cn), which was released last week.

This time, the blacklist named more than 4,000 companies that have violated the environmental protection law.

Ma cited the Sina-Mars Group APP as an example.

The official environmental protection department made two special inspections at its Hainan subsidiary and the company was fined 50,000 yuan (RM22,565) for excessive waste air emission last year.

“Five more months!” said Ma and his colleagues at the talk, referring to the time left for them to call for the green NGOs to unite together for the critical landmark regulation on Environmental Information Disclosure in China.

Today, there are about 3,000 registered green NGOs in China.

Ma, 39, who wrote the acclaimed book China's Water Crisis, which has made an immeasurable impact on environment protection in this country, also called on citizens to make good use of the information.

The Chinese government has issued rules requiring companies and government departments to publish their environmental records to increase official transparency.

The regulation, which will come into effect on May 1 next year, will be a milestone on the path of the public's right to access environmental information.

Tasked with the goal to clean up China, the IPEA director who was named one of Time magazine's World's 100 Most Influential People last year is pragmatic in his approach and is patient on how to accomplish his objectives!