In recent decades, China’s relentless drive for economic growth has put the environment under great stress—poisoning China’s water and air, polluting cities and farmlands, and putting the lives of millions at risk. That China’s environmental problem has reached crisis levels is acknowledged by China’s central government, which has passed and strengthened a large number of environmental protection laws. But the success of this effort hinges on the strength of public participation in addressing what stands as one of China’s most serious challenges.
This is where WANG CANFA, a fifty-five-year-old environmental lawyer, has played an essential role. The son of peasants in Shandong province, WANG knew early on how the poor can be crippled by a sense of powerlessness. He worked long and hard to earn law degrees from Jilin University and Beijing University, and rose to become a leading environmental legal scholar and lawyer in China.
In 1998, as a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, he founded the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims (CLAPV), the first center of its kind in China to focus on providing free legal help to pollution victims. Manned by WANG as director, a deputy and a pool of pro bono volunteer lawyers, CLAPV has handled through its hotline more than thirteen thousand environmental complaints; filed more than 550 cases, including some class action suits involving as many as 1,721 plaintiffs; and scored victories against chemical, steel, mining, waste incineration and other plants. CLAPV’s legal victories have led to the suspension of some environmentally-destructive projects and secured compensation for victims.
But WANG’s work extends beyond litigation. Knowing that enlightened action is the key, and working constructively in what is a relatively new field, CLAPV has conducted training in environmental law for around a thousand lawyers, judges, and other stakeholders and built a network of practitioners of environmental law. Going even further, WANG and his colleagues have participated in the drafting and review of more than thirty environmental laws and regulations. His participation in legislation has promoted directly the establishment of some legal systems which is benefit of victims’ rights protection and punishing polluters. CLAPV has raised wide public awareness in environmental protection and guarding environmental right through publications, mobile consultancy services, and linkages with other organizations. Energetic and highly respected from both nongovernment and government, WANG is at the center of all these efforts.
In 2010, WANG took another bold step when he established a public interest law firm specializing in environmental law that provides pro bono services. Beijing Huanzhu Law Firm, with more than thirty lawyer-volunteers, has continued and bolstered CLAPV’s litigation efforts. To date, the firm has tenaciously pursued some two hundred litigation and non-litigation cases
For WANG and his colleagues, the difficulties are seemingly insurmountable— working with and through China’s web of laws and regulations, shifts in policy, and a weak justice system; negotiating the divide between central and local governments; confronting powerful corporate interests; and raising the funds to sustain their pro bono programs. But WANG is undeterred.
Working out of a tiny law office in a rundown Beijing apartment block, this diminutive, amiable, and unprepossessing man is “larger-than-life” for those who know of his work as leader of a broad network of environmental lawyers, academics, and community groups. WANG knows the way ahead is not easy, but he remains resolutely optimistic. “As long as we persist, the goal of establishing Chinese environmental rule of law will be achieved someday,” he asserts.
In electing WANG CANFA to receive the 2014 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his discerning and forceful leadership—through scholarly work, disciplined advocacy, and pro bono public interest litigation—in ensuring that the enlightened and competent practice of environmental law in China effectively protects the rights and lives of victims of environmental abuse, especially the poor and the powerless.
