Polluters paid to join govt environment org

The government-affiliated All-China Environment Federation was reported to have charged and accepted heavy polluters as its members, fueling doubts over whether it can adequately represent the interests of the public.

The body, under the Ministry of Environmental Protection, is named as the only organization that is able to file lawsuits closely linked to the public interests against polluters in the latest draft aiming to amend the country's Environmental Protection Law.

Currently, the federation has 290 members, including companies, research institutes and other organizations, among which some are notorious polluters which have been previously punished.

While individual members are not charged fees, the costs for a five-year membership range from 10,000 yuan ($1,631) to 300,000 yuan. The more a member pays, the higher level it would be ranked in its membership hierarchy, according to the federation's official website.

The charge for members, as well as donations, government funding and other incomes, are the federation's key funding sources, its website states.

"Although it completely makes sense that a federation can absorb members and charge fees, it's still unacceptable for an organization that might represent the public interests in lawsuits to have financial links with polluters with poor records," Xia Jun, a lawyer who is very familiar with environmental litigation, told the Global Times.

A press officer from the federation, surnamed Kuang, told the Global Times Monday that they have noticed such criticisms in the media, but cannot comment at the moment.

Xia questioned whether these companies might treat the membership charges as protection fees. "Paying the federation might help those companies get rid of a lawsuit," he noted.

The National Business Daily reported on Monday that two subsidiaries of Nine Dragons Paper, a federation member, were reported to have been punished for discharging pollutants in 2008 and 2013, and the federation allegedly helped out another member in 2007, when it was suspected of damaging forestland. Neither company would comment to the Global Times Monday.

Zeng Xiaodong, vice chairman of the federation, told the Xinhua News Agency on Friday that the organization has never been steered by any behind-the-scenes powers or required to report the cases it represents.

The federation said it has successfully filed 14 lawsuits since 2009, while the environmental organization Greenpeace was quoted by the National Business Daily as saying on Monday that those cases didn't cover any of the companies on the list.

The draft amendment to the law, which is under review by the National People's Congress Standing Committee, will only give the federation and its provincial-level subsidiaries the right to file pollution-related lawsuits that damage the public interests.

Guo Chengxi, a Beijing-based lawyer who has been involved in many public interest litigations on pollution, told the Global Times that she was shocked by this draft as "this clause will close the door to civil efforts fighting with polluters on purpose and would not meet the demand of China's severe pollution situation."