An implementation assessment of China’s Environmental InformationDisclosure Decree
Lei Zhang , Arthur P. J Mol , Guizhen He , Yonglong Lu
DOI:
Received October 20, 2009,Revised January 25, 2010, Accepted , Available online
Volume 22,2010,Pages 1649-1656
- Summary
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China’s 2007 Open Government Information Regulations is widely considered as a milestone in the country’s information policy
history and is praised as a “sunshine program”. The Environmental Information Disclosure Decree was the first to operationalize
these general regulations into a sectoral information disclosure system on environment. This study assessed the implementation of the
environmental information disclosure system about six months after the Decree took e ect on May 1, 2008. Through reviewing the
websites of all 31 provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, conducting an experiment
with actual information disclosure request, and through interviews with all provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus, this article
concluded that the implementation of the environmental information disclosure system still falls short. Future improvements should
focus on further publicity of the regulations and decree to enhance public participation, the establishment of an independent evaluation
and supervision system for information disclosure, the exchange of experiences and best practices among provincial Environmental
Protection Bureaus, and on strengthening the legal status of environmental information disclosure.
