New website aims to shame China's polluters

Agence France-Presse - Hong Kong
December 13, 2007

A leading Chinese anti-pollution campaigner Thursday launched a new website that names more than 4,000 companies, including 40 multi-national firms, belching out dangerous emissions across China.

Ma Jun, the author of "China's Water Crisis" and head of an environmental think tank, launched the China Air Pollution Map which pinpoints the worst polluters in factories and power plants south of the Yangtze River.

He hopes the map will help China tackle its worsening pollution problem.

"Access to information is a pre-condition for meaningful public participation," Ma said.

He added he hoped the site will shame companies into "providing the public with an open explanation and taking corrective action."

The new map, which has taken 10 months to pull together, uses data already publicly available from government departments and official media on factories that are breaking emission standards.

Out of the 4,000 violations, more than half are in southern China.

Visitors to the site (air.ipe.org.cn) will be able to view rankings of various air pollutant levels, and compare them to other cities.

The project aims to follow the success of a similar map run by Ma's Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which has focused on polluters of China's waterways.

The scheme has sparked numerous media reports on the worst offenders and, in some cases, convinced companies to improve their treatment facilities.

The new scheme is backed by global environmental organisation WWF and ADM Capital Foundation.

"We believe there is a strong correspondence beteeen transparency and improved environmental regulation," Liam Slater, head of WWF's Hong Kong climate programme, told reporters.

At a press conference to launch the site, Ma said China has set tough environmental standards nationally, but they are often ignored on a local level.

Pollution has become a major problem in China as the economy booms and is second only to the United States in greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming.