Ma Jun says NGOs operating in China should serve as a platform that brings together public participation and information transparency. Wang Jing / China Daily

Eco-warrior says China making good progress on several environmental issues, despite challenges

In the last five years Ma Jun has often come out with maps on water, air and solid waste pollution in China, along with the continuous campaigns for blue skies in Beijing.

But one of China's most famous green warriors has of late been known for his relentless campaigns against global brands like Apple and several other IT giants. The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a non-profit organization headed by Ma, has accused Apple and other companies of causing rampant heavy metal pollution in China.

Sitting in his office, a small residential apartment near Beijing's South Second Ring Road, Ma, 44, says his campaigns have started to bear fruit and there is more awareness of environmental problems in China.

Ma says the campaigns have forced many companies to increasingly adopt green manufacturing techniques in China. Apple, which often keeps its manufacturing operations a secret, has now agreed to third-party environmental audits in some of its pilot projects in China, he says.

Though the campaign won him the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize, considered the top global accolade for grassroots environmentalists, Ma says his task is still far from over and there are several challenges ahead.

"More efforts are needed to boost public participation and information transparency, the key ingredients for the success of any green campaign. IPE serves as a platform that brings these two forces together, which we hope would be something that other NGOs operating in China also embrace as core values."

According to an IPE report released late last year, there has been no let-up in the heavy metal pollution caused by companies like Apple. "On the contrary, it has increased and now poses a grave threat to China's environment and public health. So a lot still needs to be done on the green front," he says.

Early beginnings

Ma's journey to being an eco-warrior began from his days as a researcher at the South China Morning Post newspaper. In the 1990s, Ma undertook many field investigations on the country's water crisis and came up with several startling findings on the severe water pollution in Shanxi province, the acute water shortage in Hebei and the ecological disaster along the Yellow River.

After authoring an acclaimed book on the findings called China Water Crisis, Ma's next stop was at Yale, as part of a World Fellows Program. During the time he spent in Yale, Ma realized that the answer to China's environmental problems lay in creating a mechanism that would bring together information transparency and public participation.

In 2006, he set up the IPE, and in the same year came out with an online map of the major polluters in China. The database also contained detailed information about the places/practices being used by the polluting companies and also information on the pollution records of these companies.

To further improve information transparency, in 2007, IPE released the first "blacklist" in the public domain, with a view to trigger more public participation.

The report, based on authorized information from central and local governments in China, put dozens of multinational companies' names in the media glare.

The impact of the reports was such that many of these companies sought Ma's services later to clean up their act and put in place effective pollution reduction mechanisms.

But the number of foreign environmental violators that directly pollute China's water, soil and air is still small, Ma says.

"What really matters is the environmental behavior of the small domestic manufacturers. They constitute the vast majority of the 70,000 factories that emit hazardous wastes in China."

The Measures on Open Environment Information issued in 2007, a regulation that forces environmental protection bureaus to disclose key information and companies that fail to adhere to environmental standards to publish their pollution data, have not really been able to check pollution in China, he says.

Ma says he sent repeated requests to several small companies, but often got no reply. "They have no brands, no image and the public hardly knows them. They are not bothered about their pollution records being made public."

According to Friends of Nature (FON), one of IPE's partners in the Apple campaign, Ma has been exploring various options to bring the offenders to book.

"At first he thought about putting pressure on the company from consumers. But he realized that for small factories, it is the orders that really matter," says Chang Cheng, program coordinator at the Beijing-based FON.

In 2010, IPE, FON and three other environmental organizations issued the first study of Heavy Metal Pollution by IT Brand Supply Chain, involving hundreds of suspected Chinese suppliers. As many as 29 Chinese and foreign companies were on the list.

"We wrote to each company before we released our report, asking them to confirm: whether or not the factories mentioned in the report are their suppliers; whether or not they are aware of their behavior and whether or not they are willing to improve," Ma says.

After a year of negotiations and media exposure, most of the 29 brands mentioned in the report displayed a positive attitude and took steps to improve their supply chain management.

Some companies' response went beyond Ma's expectations. Siemens AG, which was on the list, has been using the IPE database as an external reference to improve its suppliers' assessment in environmental protection. The company has maintained regular communication with IPE, in order to continuously monitor and improve the performance of its suppliers.

Nearly 600 companies, both multinational and domestic, have committed to improving their environmental performance and agreed to release more information to the public after third-party audits.

"Since last year, we have been receiving responses from at least one company every day. Just a couple of days ago, we got a reply from a supplier to Foxconn, which in turn is a major supplier for Apple Inc. That means our work now extends to cleaning up the supply chain right from the top to the bottom," Ma says.

Big difference

In the 130-square-meter apartment packed with the most basic office supplies: nine sets of desks, chairs and computers, Ma and his team are now working overtime to reconnect the links between small manufacturers in China and the big names abroad.

After cleaning up the supply chain in the IT industry, Ma's group has trained its guns on the textile industry. The IPE released a report in early April that pointed fingers at some leading apparel brands like Nike and adidas.

"As an NGO, we don't have a say in almost everything. The only thing we can do is to search on the Internet over and over again, praying we can find a little bit of useful information to prove the links do exist. And even if we do that, there is no guarantee that the companies will give us positive responses," Ma says.

He confesses that he does feel powerless, when some local governments push ahead with economic growth and ignore the health of their people and the environment.

But with improving environmental transparency and the growing awareness for environmental protection, Ma feels that non-governmental organizations such as his will be able to play a much bigger role in cleaning up China's environment.

"There were a lot of things that were out of our purview several years ago. But now green issues can be an important mover in the business world," Ma says, adding that the feeling of being powerless in China will gradually fade away for NGOs.

Contact the writer at mengjing@chinadaily.com.cn