China Opens

In an effort to assuage public discontent over environmental problems and to meet new targets for limiting pollution, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has put into effect national regulations allowing ordinary citizens access to national and local government environmental records. If fully implemented, the measures allow the Chinese to keep tabs on their government and potential polluters. Information that should now be accessible includes statistics on industrial polluters and data on government environmental enforcement efforts. NRDC's Beijing office is training Chinese government officials how to better carry out these new, open information duties as well as teaching citizens how to obtain the records.