EGP-Guizhou Project Closing Workshop

March 12th 2015, the Final Conference of the EGP-Guizhou project was successfully held in Guiyang, Guizhou Province. For the Final Conference, local stakeholders from all target groups were invited as well as representatives from MEP and the EC. The aim with the Final Conference was to highlight the project’s outcomes and results as the project is reaching its end but also to discuss the next steps on developing environmental justice in Guizhou and China. The Final Conference was divided into a morning session with presentations and an afternoon session including a site visit to an industry demonstrating the Guizhou best practice of third-party supervision.

The Final Conference was moderated by Mr. Lv Keqin, Deputy Secretary General of All-China Environment Federation (ACEF), who opened the conference by welcoming the participants and invited stakeholders and experts. Continuing, welcoming remarks were put forward by high-level speakers. The first welcoming remark was given by Ms. Li Jingyun, Deputy Director of Laws and Regulations Division at the Ministry of Environmental Protection. She underlined that environmental protection will become the new battlefield and that the government needs participation from the public to protect the environment, an aspect that EGP-Guizhou project successfully has put a lot of effort into. Next, Mr. Dimitri De Boer, Team Leader of the EU-China Environmental Governance Programme (EGP), highlighted that the Guizhou experience working with environmental rights protection from the EGP-Guizhou project needs to be spread and promoted to the central government, which will be one of EGPs main tasks ahead. Mr. Chen Song, Chief of Policy and Regulation Division from Guizhou Environmental Protection Department (EPD), put forward his opening remarks thanking the EGP-Guizhou project for their efforts helping the EPD to strengthen its environmental enforcement and hoped for more cooperation in the future. Giving the last welcoming remarks was Mr. Mikael Olshammar, EGP-Guizhou Project Manager from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), highlighting the main impact of the project and thanking all project partners and stakeholders for their hard work and efforts in improving access to environmental justice to protect people’s environmental rights in Guizhou Province.

The welcoming remarks were followed by a number of presentations on the result and impact of the EGP-Guizhou project. First, member from the project team gave a joint presentation providing an overview of the project and its main impact. Mr. Peter Stigson, IVL, presented the efforts put into awareness-raising of environmental rights protection highlighting the TV-programs and handbooks produced by the project. Mr. Johan Strandberg, IVL, together with local stakeholder Mr. Yin Jian, Policy and Regulation Division from Guizhou EPD, put forward the main work and impact from the capacity building activities carried out by EGP-Guizhou project, focusing on Environmental Damage Assessment (EDA). Ms. Gao Xiaoyi, ACEF, then gave an overview of the main policy impact the project has had during the last two years successfully promoting policy changes both on central and local level. Ms. Anja Karlsson from IVL next highlighted the visibility of the project, both in media and through the project website, and the dissemination of project materials encouraging the participants to keep using the project website and project partner’s websites to access project materials. As a last part of the presentation, Ms. Yao LingLing from ACEF presented and displayed the short version of the TV-program produced by the project as well as the cartoon with instructions on how to protect ones environmental rights.

Mr. Luo Guangqian, Chief Judge from the Qingzhen Environmental Court, put forward the impact of the EGP-Guizhou Project on present and future work in Environmental Court and possible influence beyond the province. Mr. Lou especially highlighted the impact the EGPGuizhou project has had on increasing the capacity of the environmental court by providing trainings on basic environmental knowledge and EDA. Mr. Lou also emphasized the lessons learned from the Study Tour to Sweden with the result that the Qingzhen Environmental Court now is looking into the possibility of introducing a system of technical judges in court and discussing how the court could be involved in issuing permits for environmentally hazardous activities. Moving on, Mr. Dan Guttmann, visiting Professor at the Peking University School of Law, introduced the results from the latest study produced by the EGP-Guizhou project. The study puts forward what Chinese environmental NGOs can learn from EU environmental NGOs experiences making environmental law work and how these experiences can be used by Chinese NGOs to develop their work. The last presentation of the morning was held by Ms. Bai Min, Vice President of Guizhou Province Lawyer Association, who gave an introduction to the best practice of NGO third-party supervision tested by Qingzhen government and Qingzhen Environmental Court in order to improve the environmental supervision of functional departments and enterprises in the province.

In total, more than 50 participants attended the Final Conference including representatives from Guizhou EPD, the local Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPB), media, Guizhou Academy of Environmental Sciences, Guizhou Lawyer association, industry and the local environmental courts.