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"The public database uses government data to name and shame China's worst air polluters," said Lisa Genasci, director of ADM Capital Foundation, one of the Web site's co-sponsors, during the launch of the site in Hong Kong.
The Web site at http://air.ipe.org.cn is called The China Air Pollution Map, and is the work of Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. The Web site reveals data on air emissions in China and lists enterprises that have violated air regulation standards.
"What we have is a list of non-compliant companies in this database. Across China, we have compiled records of violations, which have reached 4,300 at this moment," said Ma, a recipient of the China Green Man award in 2006 and one of the 100 most influential people on the planet, according to Time Magazine. On the blacklist are around 40 multinational companies, including Shanghai Michelin Warrior Tire Co, Gammon Construction, and Samsung Heavy Industries (Ningbo) Co., among others, all found to be violating emission standards.
"Some companies like HealthZone from Korea have been found breaking both the air and water discharge standards," Ma said. Although hundreds of small and local companies appear on the list, several large subsidiaries of China's top companies are also there. "Subsidiaries of PetroChina, SinoPac, Luneng Power Company, Conch Cement -- all major state owned enterprises -- have violated discharge standards," Ma said. Among the violators are also 300 power plants.
The criteria for listing is the violation of national and regional standards for actual air emission standards, and non-compliant enterprises on the list have either violated emission standards or broken procedural legal requirements such as the Environmental Impact Assessment law -- a process that evaluates environmental consequences of a proposed project or program and analyzes alternatives. The list is a compilation of recorded violations and does not necessarily reflect any given company's current state of compliance.
"They may not necessarily reflect the current status of all the factories," Ma said, "But the point is that when one is openly listed as breaking discharge standards, then that company owes the public an open explanation about its behavior."
Surprisingly, the data on the Web site has not been obtained by secret investigators or tips from anonymous sources prying into sensitive corporate information, but has been cleverly compiled through various official government sources. Such sources include information openly provided by various government agencies, statistical yearbooks, government Web sites, government announcements that list company violations and penalties, and local media that officially quote government reports.
"We compiled various agency lists, like one that requires enterprises to handle their air discharge within a set limit time or blacklists on defaulters provided by the government," Ma said.
According to Ma, publicly available information on corporate offences has deterred most defaulters on the list from taking retaliatory action against his institute and the Web site producers. Rather, the mood is more conciliatory where such companies are seeking solutions to get off the polluters list, he said.
While the Web site lists violating companies based all over China, the detailed air quality and emissions database currently includes only 15 southern provinces and 170 municipalities in China and Hong Kong. The Web site expects to compile and update details for the rest of mainland China in a second launch next year. Web site users can view rankings of various air pollutants in their cities and compare those with other cities in China in order to gain a better understanding of air quality in their region.
"By providing easier access to air pollution data, the China Air Pollution Map aims to widen the engagement of stakeholder groups to tackle China's severe air pollution problem, which threatens public health and affects the quality of life for millions of people," Ma said.
The World Wide Fund for Nature, co-sponsors of the Web site, is hopeful that access to information will lead to greater compliance by polluters. "Public engagement and disclosure of information are key ingredients in successfully implementing China's ambitious environmental targets," WWF Hong Kong's Climate program head Liam Salter said.
China is home to 16 of the world's top 20 polluted cities. According to the IPE, the nation's air quality in major cities is so poor that none of its 113 cities enjoys Class One air quality, classified as the best. Only 44 percent reach Class Two, while the rest have to experience polluted air at all times. The reason behind such degrading air pollution is the massive impact caused by three major forces -- globalization, industrialization and urbanization, coming together in a short span of two decades. China's spiraling industrial growth is energy and resource intensive, where acting as the world's cheap goods manufacturer only results in industrial waste being dumped in its backyard while rapid urbanization based on unsustainable models aids pollution and environmental hazards.
Ma believes that since 2003, China has provided access to environmental information and created policies and a legal basis to facilitate public participation. However, enforcement remains a sticky issue and the only way to break the tide between money and power is to engage the stakeholders and the public to shoulder responsibility toward environmental protection in the same aggressive manner in which economic growth is tackled.
Ma's Web site that tracks air polluters follows the success of its predecessor -- a Web site launched in 2006 that mapped water pollution across China. His highly acclaimed book "China's Water Crisis" is regarded as the most authoritative account on China's environmental crisis and has been compared to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
As winter sets in, one can only expect that the public display of air polluters, accessible worldwide on the Internet, will usher a brighter and cleaner spring in China.
