Latest comments posted about Your right to know: a historic moment on ChinaDialogue en-gb http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1962-Your-right-to-know-a-historic-moment http://staging.chinadialogue.net/images/cdlogo.gif http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1962-Your-right-to-know-a-historic-moment It's good to make the environmental records available to the public. Translated by Canly Tseng Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:05:45 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7590 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7590 Congratulations to China, to Ma Jun and to the Chinese people on this historic opportunity. I wish you success in this important fight for a less polluted world and for a more transparent and responsible corporate environment. -- Matthew Wed, 07 May 2008 04:12:00 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7345 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7345 Thanks for your attention. Enforcement is often more challenging than legislation in China. To ensure that this new legislation be put into use, the NGOs and citizens who care about the issues could do the following two things. The first thing is to test the new rules in practice. Some local NGOs have plans to send out letters to alert listed polluters that they are legally bound to disclose discharge data within a limited timeframe. Some others plan to follow the rules by posting requests to local agencies over the next couple of months, to ask for such information as the list of polluters in their regions. If media could follow up by exposing those listed polluters who fail or even refuse to disclose, it will help generate public pressure on the companies to meet the legal requirements. Secondly, the data disclosed by agencies and corporations shall be collected, categorized and presented in a user-friendly way so that people will appreciate the value of environmental data disclosure. We need to keep in mind that the data itself may be of little use to ordinary users unless it is interpreted properly. We have modified our database to make sure that the corporate discharge data we input is searchable and cross-comparable on our Web site. Ma Jun Sun, 04 May 2008 03:33:02 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7333 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7333 It is a great achievement that the Chinese government will start the trial of this legislation. The next question is how to make sure that it would work. This involves a lot of supervision and management. So my question to the author is: what would be a possible working model for the public sector and non-profit sector working together to ensure legislation can be effective to the companies that are considered as the main source of water pollution? VZ Thu, 01 May 2008 12:15:42 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7321 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1962#comment-7321