全球环保主义冲击中国
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译自2004年2月4日电子刊物"耶鲁全球"译者：王守律（大同）校者：田方萌（北京）作者：杨国彬(Guobin Yang) 首发于光明网。
原编者按：资本主义不是唯一风行中国的"主义"。上世纪90年代早期以来，中国同沙尘暴、森林砍伐、流域水污染以及其它问题的斗争引起了国内外环保组织的关注。1992年里约地球峰会（Rio Earth Summit）之后，北京政府签署了致力于可持续发展的承诺。中国学者杨国斌认为，从那以后，一批双边援助机构、发展银行和国际非政府组织一直在支持中国本土的环保主义。互联网日益广泛的普及为中国的环保主义者提供了一个充满活力的一起讨论不公平和争论解决办法的空间，如果说从政治上看它还不太稳定。然而，即使有国外环保组织在虚拟空间和现实生活两方面的影响，杨认为，中国的环保主义者的工作议程和关注焦点仍然具有独特的中国背景。杨说，如果他们要成功地处理中国迫切的环境问题，他们必须在全球影响和本土领导之间找到恰当的平衡。
华盛顿：如果近来某天你发现自己在北京一家快餐店，你可能会看到如下场面：一位看上去很职业化的女性走进餐馆点了菜，从挎包中掏出一双筷子，开始进餐。猜猜她为什么不用桌上的一次性筷子？原来她是一位致力于拯救林木的环保主义者。
环保主义在上世纪90年代很多冲击中国"主义"中的一种--如消费主义、物质主义、民族主义、以及资本主义。它的核心观念是一种全球化了的可持续发展话语。因此，环保主义的诞生昭示着全球环保主义来到中国。尽管历史不长，它正在对中国的政治和社会发挥着某些影响。
首先，环保主义已经在各种文化形式中找到了它的表达方式，例如，设在北京的环境文学研究会已经出版了数种环境题材的文学作品丛书。丛书收入了一些当代中国知名作家的作品。报纸上的环境报道数量也在上升。调查显示，1994年中国报纸平均发表125篇有关环境问题的文章，到1999年这一数字已经增长到630篇。电视和电台的环境节目已经很普通了。随着互联网的传播，环境网站如雨后春笋般地涌现。作为这种文化活跃现象的结果，"绿色话语"（greenspeak）已经进入中文语汇中。生物多样性、转基因食品、绿色消费、以及动物权利都已成为热门的公众话题。
环保主义还在中国找到了组织基础。过去10年间出现了约100个非政府环保组织（NGOs），这还不包括数千家由政府组织的NGOs（这样说是因为它们是由政府组织资助的）。另外，大约有200个学生环境协会---NGOs的雏形---活跃在大学校园内。
这些组织带头掀起一场静悄悄的底层环保运动，致力于唤起良知、解决问题，甚至大力提倡。例如，北京的"自然之友"到农村学校教孩子们关于环境保护的知识。同样设在北京的污染受害者法律援助中心自1998年成立以来一直为污染受害者提供法律援助。它的电话热线已经收到数以千计询问环境法律问题的电话。重庆市的环境志愿者协会向社会发布了与三峡工程有关的生态问题报告。一些组织发起了大规模的保护湿地和濒危物种的运动。其它组织则揭露违反环境法的企业。
如何评估中国的环保主义的发展程度？时间安排（Timing）是至关重要的，而这正是诉说全球化故事的地方。在上世纪90年代，许多国内外的事件促使中国进一步融入国际社会，拓宽了国内政治空间，推动了环保主义的发展。
首先，随着1992年邓小平"南巡"期间对经济改革成果的赞扬，中国加快了融入世界市场体系的步伐。1992年里约地球峰会之后，中国政府在1994年3月公布的"中国21世纪议程"白皮书中发表了它的可持续发展战略。自那以后发布了大量的环境法律和政策，引导着一些分析家去观察中国国家的"绿色运动"（greening）。
90年代，多边银行、双边援助机构以及国际非政府组织涌入中国，为中国非政府组织带来了资金、项目、专家和合法性。1995年，联合国世界妇女大会通过非正常途径将国际非政府组织文化带入中国。联合国大会开始前的非政府组织妇女论坛虽然被中国政府安排到北京之外的一个交通不便的郊区城镇，但它仍然将国际非政府组织的活力展现给中国公众，赋予中国与会者直接面对公众和组织网络的经验。
中国存在着严重的环境问题--如沙尘暴、温室气体排放、跨国界水域污染、以及森林砍伐。深化对这些问题的认识加强了中国与世界的联系。许多国际环境非政府组织，如世界野生动物基金会（WWF）、生态箴言（Ecologia）、太平洋环境（Pacific Environment）、以及地球之友（Friends of Earth）等等已经在中国开展了项目，并设立了办公室。甚至激进的绿色和平组织现在北京也设有一个办事处。2003年11月，绿色和平组织的执行主管杰德-莱坡尔德（Gerd Leipold）还在北京大学作了一次公开讲演。
1990年代也见证了网络用户和网络文化的急剧增长，2003年12月中国互联网用户增加到8000万户。在众多的民间组织中，中国的环保主义者是最先拥抱互联网，并以此来推进他们事业的人士之一。在一个统治严密的政治体系中，互联网为这样的民间社会行为提供了相对自由的空间。一些环保组织依靠互联网生存，其组织的认同与网站紧密相连。
虽然中国的政治体系总体上不欢迎非官方渠道的渗透，两种重要的社会趋势已经出现，表明了人们对环境的关注。一是有关环境问题的争论范围和程度在扩大。其范围涉及从环境权利和动物权力到奢侈生活方式的伦理缺失等方面。另一个趋势是非政府组织领导的民间行动的增多，如环境观察、社区垃圾回收活动以及在农村学校的教育项目。
公众争论有助于提高环境意识和解决具体问题。它们也具有政治影响，因为它们的发展既反映了也推进了公民社会的成长。此外，非政府组织还可作为民主参与的实验室。比如唐锡阳发起的绿色营活动，这是一个面向大学生的年度夏令营，旨在向中国的年轻一代提供民主实践的培训。他说，"没有真正的民主生活，就不会有永久的绿水青山。"成立于1996年的绿色营已经培训了足够的年轻环保主义者，绿色营也被打趣地称为"中国环保运动的西点军校。"
尽管有着来自全球的激励，中国的环保主义并不只是一种简单的模仿运动。中国的环保主义者有着一种本土的热望，就是在如佛教和道教的东方哲学传统上，为可持续发展的全球话语找到根基。这些传统强调人与自然的和谐，反对以人类为中心的对待环境方式，并奉劝人类在自然面前保持谦卑。这些理念使得全球生态思想与中国本土更加亲近。
中国的环保主义者还强烈在希望在当地条件下为环保主义找到基础。例如，虽然中国最近开发西部的政策包含了环境保护内容，一些非政府组织强调环境保护不仅应该包括物种保护，还应包括当地文化和社区的保护。哈西-扎西多杰（Haxi Zhaxiduojie），青海省的雪域三江（Snowland Great Rivers）环境保护协会的藏族领导，2002年在北京举行的一次非政府组织论坛上清楚地表达了这种观点。他认为在少数民族地区，生物多样性和文化多样性的保护"应该得到同等的对待"，而且决策过程"应该有当地民众参与"。
然而，在为本土志向奋斗和迎接当地挑战的过程中，中国的环保主义者不能随抛弃全球环保主义的后果。可持续发展的全球话语为本地环保主义者在严格的政治条件下运作提供了象征性的空间。它还可以为推进民主实践和价值提供一种保护伞式的词令。除了它的形式价值外，全球环保主义有着自己的组织基础，可为中国的环保主义者提供精神和物质支持。简而言之，如果说环保主义坐着全球化的过街花车来到中国，为了生存和发展起见，它应当继续与全球运动保持联系。
杨国斌是伍德罗-威尔逊国际学者中心（Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars）的成员和夏威夷-马努阿大学（the University of Hawaii-Manoa）的社会学副教授。他曾撰写过几篇文章，探讨互联网在中国公民社会发展中的作用。
附：原文及网址：
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=3250&page=2Proposal to UST
Capitalism is not the only ‘-ism‘ flourishing in China today. Since the early 1990s, the country‘s battles against dust storms, deforestation, watershed pollution, and other problems have attracted the attention of both domestic groups and foreign environmental organizations. The government in Beijing signaled its official commitment to sustainable development after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Since then, says China scholar Guobin Yang, an array of bilateral aid agencies, development banks, and international non-governmental organizations has bolstered homegrown Chinese activism. The ever-widening diffusion of the internet has also granted Chinese environmentalists a vibrant, if politically precarious, space to come together to discuss grievances and debate solutions. Yet even with the influence of foreign organizations in cyberspace and on the ground, Yang argues, Chinese activists have agendas and concerns that are particular to the Chinese context. If they are to succeed in addressing China‘s urgent environmental problems, Yang says, they must find the right balance of global input and local leadership. - YaleGlobal
Global Environmentalism Hits China
International and domestic groups join forces to combat environmental woes
Guobin Yang
YaleGlobal, 4 February 2004
WASHINGTON: If one of these days you find yourself in a fast food restaurant in Beijing, you might witness the following: A professional-looking woman sails into the restaurant, makes her order, and fishes out a pair of chopsticks from her purse, with which she begins to eat. Guess why she doesn‘t touch the disposable chopsticks on the table? Well, she is an environmentalist committed to saving trees.
Environmentalism is one of many "isms" - consumerism, materialism, nationalism, and capitalism - that hit China in the 1990s. Its linchpin notion is the globalized language of sustainable development. The birth of environmentalism thus signals the arrival of global environmentalism in China. Despite its short history, it is already exerting influences on Chinese politics and society.
First, environmentalism has found expression in various cultural forms. The Beijing-based Environmental Literature Research Society, for example, has published several series of literary works on environmental themes. The series involve some of the best-known writers in China today. Environmental reporting in the newspapers is also on the rise. One survey shows that while on average Chinese newspapers carried only 125 articles on environmental issues in 1994, the number had grown to 630 by 1999. Television and radio programs about the environment have become common features. With the diffusion of the Internet, environmental websites have mushroomed. As a result of this cultural effervescence, a "greenspeak" has entered the Chinese vocabulary. Biodiversity, GM foodstuffs, green consumption, and animal rights have all become hot public topics. (See "Global Anti-GM Sentiment Slows China‘s Biotech Agenda").
Environmentalism has also found an organizational base in China. Over the past decade, about 100 environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have cropped up, not including the thousands of government-organized NGOs, so called because they are sponsored by government agencies. Additionally, about 200 student environmental associations - fledgling NGOs - are active on college campuses.
These organizations are spearheading a quiet grassroots environmental movement engaged in consciousness-raising, problem-solving, and even advocacy. For example, the Beijing-based Friends of Nature goes to rural schools to teach children about environmental protection. The Center for Legal Aid to Pollution Victims, also in Beijing, has provided legal assistance to pollution victims since its establishment in 1998. Its telephone hotline has received thousands of calls about environmental legal issues. The Green Volunteer League in Chongqing city, Sichuan province, publicizes the ecological problems related to the Three Gorges Dam project. Several organizations have launched large-scale campaigns to protect wetlands and endangered species. Others have exposed business enterprises that violated environmental laws.
How to account for the growth of environmentalism in China? Timing is crucial, and this is where the globalization story comes in. In the 1990s, a host of domestic and international events integrated China further into the world community, widening domestic political spaces and boosting environmentalism.
First, with Deng Xiaoping‘s "Southern tour" in 1992, during which he sang the virtues of economic reform, China accelerated its integration into the world market system. Then, following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the Chinese government published its strategies for sustainable development in a "China Agenda 21" white paper issued in March 1994. A large body of environmental laws and policies has since been promulgated, leading some analysts to observe the "greening" of the Chinese state.
In the 1990s, multilateral banks, bilateral aid agencies, and international NGOs poured into China, bringing funding, projects, expertise, and legitimacy to Chinese NGOs. In 1995, the UN World Conference on Women smuggled international NGO culture into China through the back door. The NGO Forum on Women before the UN Conference, although relegated by the Chinese government to the inconvenience of a suburban town outside Beijing, nonetheless brought the vigor of international NGOs to public view in China and gave Chinese participants direct exposure and networking experience.
A growing awareness of China‘s grave environmental problems - like dust storms, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution of trans-border watersheds, and deforestation - has increased China‘s connections to the world. Many international environmental NGOs, such as WWF, Ecologia, Pacific Environment, and Friends of Earth, have set up projects or opened offices in China. Even the radical Greenpeace now has an office in Beijing. As recently as November 2003, its executive director, Gerd Leipold, even gave a public lecture at Beijing University.
The 1990s also saw the dramatic growth of an Internet population and culture, with the number of Internet users rising to 80 million in December 2003. Of the numerous citizen groups, China‘s environmentalists were among the first to embrace the Internet to advance their cause. In a draconian political system, cyberspace offers relatively free spaces for such civil society activities. Some environmental groups depend on the Internet for existence, with organizational identities closely tied to their websites.
Although China‘s political system generally does not welcome input through unofficial channels, two important public trends have emerged that reveal people‘s concerns about the environment. One is the growing range and intensity of public debates on environmental issues. These could range anywhere from environmental rights and animal rights to the ethical lapses of extravagant lifestyles. The other trend is the rise of NGO-led citizen action, such as environmental monitoring, community recycling campaigns, and educational projects in rural schools.
Global Environmentalism Hits China
Public debates and citizen action contribute to environmental consciousness-raising as well as tackling concrete problems. They have political consequences too, for their development both reflects and boosts the growth of civil society. Furthermore, NGOs may serve as laboratories of democratic participation. Tang Xiyang, founder of Green Camp, an annual summer camp for college students, hopes to provide training in democratic practices to China‘s younger generation. As he puts it, "without real democratic life, there will not be everlasting green rivers or mountains." Inaugurated in 1996, Green Camp has graduated enough young environmentalists to be jokingly dubbed the "West Point of China‘s environmental movement."
For all its global inspiration, environmentalism in China is not a just a copycat movement. For Chinese environmentalists, one local aspiration is to ground the global discourse of sustainable development in eastern philosophical traditions such as Buddhism and Daoism. These traditions stress the harmony between humans and nature, reject human-centered approaches to the environment, and admonish humility before nature. These ideas bring global ecological thinking closer home.
Chinese environmentalists also aspire to ground environmentalism in local conditions. For example, while China‘s recent policy to develop its western regions has an environmental protection component, some NGOs have stressed that environmental protection should entail not only the protection of species, but also of local cultures and communities. Haxi Zhaxiduojie, a Tibetan leader of the Snowland Great Rivers Environmental Protection Association in Qinghai province, articulated this vision at an NGO forum in Beijing in October 2002. He argues that in minority regions, the protection of biodiversity and cultural diversity "should receive equal respect" and that policy-making "should involve local people."
In striving for local aspirations and meeting local challenges, however, Chinese environmentalists cannot afford to abandon global environmentalism. The global discourse of sustainable development offers symbolic room for local environmentalists to maneuver under strict political conditions. It can serve as a protective umbrella term for promoting democratic practices and values. In addition to its symbolic power, global environmentalism has its own organizational base, which provides solidarity and material support to Chinese environmentalists. In short, if environmentalism arrived in China on the bandwagon of globalization, for its survival and growth it should stay connected to the global movement.
Guobin Yang (yangguo@wwic.si.edu) is a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He is the author of several articles on the role of the Internet in civil society development in China.
Rights:
2004 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
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