Cooperation and Development Section ■ Delegation of the European Union to China and Mongolia

Operations Section

Environmental Governance Programme

Duration / 5 years
2010-2015
Beneficiary country / People’s Republic of China
EC Contribution / € 15 000 000
China Contribution / € 750 000 (in kind)
Grantee Contribution / € 3750 000
Executing Authority / Ministry of Commerce of China (MOFCOM)
Implementing Agency / Ministry of Environment Protection (MEP)
Location / ThroughoutChina
EU Delegation Contact Person / Ms. Huang Xueju

Programme Background

The EU-China Environmental Governance Programme (EGP)worksto improve environmental governance in China by strengthening environmental information disclosure, public participation, access to justice and corporate environmental responsibility both at the national and local level.

The Government of China recognizes that the public and the private sector have an important role to play in environmental governance and environmental protection.The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) places a high priority on improving the structure of environmental governance, including innovative mechanisms and finding ways to better guarantee a healthy living environment for the public. With a powerful new wave of public awarenessof environmental issues, MEP has steadily increased its capacity and support to public involvement.

The EGP is designed to support those efforts through facilitating policy development at the national level and a series of practical demonstrations at the local level. This programme advises the central government in drafting and implementing legislation related to public participation in environmental monitoring and decision making, in public access to justice and in involving the business community in environmental governance. Furthermore, the programme supports local partnership projects that contribute to local sustainable development for the benefit of the people through local level public participation and accountability.

ProgrammeObjectives

The overall objective is to contribute to the efforts of the Chinese Government and general public to improve environmental protection in China and promote local sustainable development for the benefit of the people through public participation and accountability in China.

The Programme's core themes are:

  1. Public access to environmental information
  2. Public participation in environmental information and decision making
  3. Access to justice in environmental matters
  4. Corporate environmental responsibility

The EGP employs a two component approach:

  • Component 1 focuses on demonstrations of best practice at the local level and is implemented, via grant projects, by consortia of European and Chinese organisations.
  • Component 2 focuses on the national level and is implemented by a team composed of Chinese and European experts, under the MEP Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy.

Current Status

The programme is implementing its final annual work plan and is expected to complete in November 2015.

The national component (Component 2) is delivering a series of high impact activities, such as:

-Providing expert inputs to:

  • National People’s Congress on the revision of the Environment Protection Law
  • Supreme People’s Court on the Judicial Interpretations on Environmental Public Interest Litigation
  • National People’s Congress on the revision of the Air Pollution Prevention Law
  • State Council Development and Research Center on the role of NGOs in building environmental rule of law under the new Environmental Protection Law

-Disseminationof EU environmental policy documents, including the ‘AarhusConvention Implementation Guide’ and translation

-Providing capacity building and public communications under the 4 programme themes with about 30 activities and frequent media exposure

-A comprehensive policy recommendation report, summarizing the key recommendations emerging from this five year cooperation programme

The 15 local partnership projects (Component 1) started in late 2012, and most of them have been completed by mid 2015. Various outcomes were achieved, includingpolicy recommendations and capacity building at the local level. Good examples of successful projects include those on air quality modelling and forecasting, training of environmental judges and the establishment of environmental tribunals, and the preparation of a number of handbooks for best practices regarding environmental information disclosure, public participation, access to justice and corporate environmental responsibility.

More information, including a knowledge base with all available results, can be found on the website:

Last update: 26May 2014

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