PITI Press Release – Information Transparency Moves toward New and Innovative Patterns
(Please do not use until after 5 p.m. on August 11, 2015)
On August 11, 2015, the 120-city Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) assessment
report was released in Beijing. The results of the assessment show that, on the basis of the
formation of a greater common understanding toward environmental information disclosure
among multiple different stakeholders, pollution information transparency work across China has
made significant progress between 2014 and 2015.
Since 2009, the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) and the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) have for six consecutive years conducted an assessment of the status of pollutionsource monitoring information disclosure in 120 cities across China, including provincial-level cities
and key cities for environmental protection.
At the press conference held at the Publicity and Education Center of the Beijing Environmental
Protection Bureau, environmental officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP)
and many different cities, academic experts, and NGO representatives discussed advancements in
and the overall direction of environmental information transparency.
This round’s PITI assessment results demonstrate new advancements in patterns of disclosure. The
PITI scores for the 120 cities that were assessed on average exhibit a substantial 54.4% increase
from the previous year’s scores. For the first time in six years, there were significant changes to the
highest ranking cities, with Wenzhou’s (Zhejiang province) score of 69.3 vaulting it to the top of the
list. Even more striking is that the 3rd- and 5th-ranking cities, Yantai and Qingdao, represent
Shandong province’s rapid emergence as a leader in information disclosure. The southeast coast’s
leading role has evolved with Zhejiang and Shandong moving forward together in many new
aspects.
Of the provincial-level cities, Beijing’s favorable performance in such areas as “daily records of
enterprises that are exceeding emissions limits or in noncompliance” and “environmental impact
assessment (EIA) information” led it to attain a score of 67 and to its fourth consecutive year atop
of the list of provincial-level cities.
The report enumerates many localities’ useful explorations into innovative systems, including
Shandong’s “shuangshai” (dual platform) method of publishing information on pollution sources’
daily violations; Guangdong’s development of an “administrative penalty information” platform to
consolidate and report on different cities’ penalty information; Hunan’s “enterprise environmental
credit rankings” to solicit public opinion and invite local environmental groups’ supervision; the
use of network systems such as the “Shandong Environmental Protection Government Weibo
System” and “Yinchuan Government Cloud System” for the handling of environmental complaints
and reports; and Tianjin Economic and Development Area’s (TEDA’s) promotion of enterprises’
development of self-reporting for environmental information disclosure.
Ma Jun, the Director of IPE, believes that these advancements have been achieved on the basis of
multiple different stakeholders’ formation of a greater common understanding of environmental
information disclosure. The newly revised Environmental Protection Law devoted an entire chapter
specifically to information disclosure and public participation; the new leaders of the MEP raised
the topic of information disclosure multiple times at the news conference of the lianghui meetings
and pointed out that exposing information concerning all pollution sources’ emissions to public
scrutiny has made everyone play a supervisory role toward pollution emissions; and the demands
of MEP’s leadership to use internet-focused thinking have together opened up transparent ways
of thinking, promoted timely and comprehensive disclosure of information, and formed a means
for interaction with the public.
Those in charge of local departments responsible for environmental protection have also
formulated a new recognition of and new ideas concerning environmental information
transparency. The assessment groups participating in PITI investigations found that for the local
environmental protection bureaus of Shandong, Zhejiang and other provinces, information
disclosure has already moved beyond just being a work requirement of higher authorities and
furthermore has also exceeded merely satisfying the public’s right to know; rather, it is looked upon
as a means for mobilizing extensive participation among multiple stakeholders to work together to
promote pollution reduction.
Researcher Wang Hua of the Department of Social Affairs of MEP’s Environmental and Economic
Policy Research Center attended the report’s release and presented a speech. His research
summarizes and analyzes the key problems currently existing in China’s environmental information
disclosure work and raises a series recommendations for China’s environmental protection
organizations to promote environmental information disclosure work.
NRDC’s China Program Director Qian Jingjing positively assessed how environmental information
disclosure has made considerable progress over the past few years, both in legislation and in
practice. She noted that various regions’ formation of innovative methods fully illustrate the active
role of information disclosure in promoting positive interaction between the public and
environmental supervisors, strengthening supervision of pollution sources, and further advancing
energy saving and pollution reduction.
Officials from environmental protection departments in Beijing, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Linyi, Yantai,
Qingdao, Jinan, Zaozhuang, Wuhan and Tianjin TEDA discussed innovative methods for
environmental information disclosure with environmental law experts, including Wang Canfa, Yang
Sujuan, Hu Jing and Yan Houfu.
This round’s report also shows that pollution sources’ information disclosure still exhibits
significant room for expansion, starting with the fact that overall openness needs to be improved:
42.5% of departments responsible for environmental information disclosure failed to score any
points for their voluntary work responsibilities concerning the publication of daily monitoring
information, and only 13 provinces developed assessments for measuring enterprise
environmental behavior and/or environmental credit. The second major deficiency lies in the
significant shortcomings of enterprises’ disclosure of emissions data and effective disclosure of EIA
information. Thirdly, the majority of regions’ official government Weibo accounts still do not
respond to the public’s complaints or reports, to the point that 27 cities’ environmental protection
bureaus’ official Weibo accounts have been dubbed “zombie users” by netizens for not publishing
any new information over a long period of time.
To respond to these issues, this round’s PITI report recommends that local environmental
protection departments gradually raise awareness toward information disclosure, improve the
construction and integration of platforms, use new media to form a positive means of interaction
between the government and the public, and also at the same time make enterprises become the
key agents for information disclosure, collaboratively extend environmental information disclosure,
and serve the needs of green economic development.