China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018

China Policy Journal ter pollution in urban areas (Wu 2017). IPE coordinated dozens of grassroots ENGOs across the country to join this campaign and form a network to facilitate the exchange of information and collaborative action. In Guangzhou, some local NGOs also joined this network and became active participants in pollution control campaigns and private enforcement activities focusing on local environmental violations. One of the active Guangzhou-based ENGOs participating in the private monitoring of industrial pollution is Guangzhou Environmental Protection (GEP). Stemming from a volunteer group organized by several ordinary citizens concerned about the environmental deterioration in their home city, GEP has turned into a professional Green NGO specifically focusing on detecting and reporting illegal water pollution over the past few years. Besides carrying out independent investigations itself and also reporting on illegal pollutant emissions, GEP also relies on mobilizing local communities to detect and report illegal polluting sources. GEP’s independent monitoring and mobilization of community participation have led to a growing number of detections of illegal emissions made by small polluting sources that are poorly covered by the formal regulatory system. To further enhance its capacity to deter environmental violations, GEP has been consciously trying to nurture and maintain cooperative relationships with the local environmental authorities and it has established regular coordinative mechanisms with the municipal and provincial EPBs and Water Service Bureaus (WSBs). The GEP’s proactive engagement with the government has been rewarded because the environmental authorities are becoming more responsive to citizen reporting and supportive of public participation in environmental law enforcement. For instance, in 2016, GEP and its community partners reported 37 cases of illegal emissions to the local environmental authorities and most of them were investigated. In the same year, GEP, along with several other grassroots and official social organizations, was invited by the municipal government to train citizens who had volunteered to serve as “citizen river chiefs,” an innovative strategy designed to mobilize public participation in a top-down enforcement campaign aiming to curb urban water pollution. The rise of grassroots NGOs like GEP improved the capacity of mobilizing public participation and establishing partnership among potential pollution victims, NGOs and governmental regulators. 5.2. Civil Lawsuits Led by NGOs NGO-led environmental public interest litigations have proven to be effective instruments to deter corporate environmental offenses and to enforce environmental standards in the industrialized countries. In China, however, “citizen suits” against environmental violations had been lacking because the laws did not provide articles for public participation in environmental litigation and for prosecution for infringing the public interests associated with the illegal polluting behavior of firms. 158

China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 161