A couple of days ago,  Reuters and China Environmental Law Blog reported in English, and Sohu.com reported in Chinese (report / full-text) on a letter written by China’s largest NGO, Friends of Nature released a letter encouraging the Chinese National People’s Congress to take the environment into consideration when allocating the RMB 4 trillion that will be spent in order to get China’s economy going again.

While the content of the letter is significant, I believe that it is important for people outside of China to begin to see that domestic Chinese NGOs are starting to have a voice in the political environment here in China.  Where in the past, it was the domain of foreign NGOs such as Greenpeace or the Natural Resource Defense Council to drift into policy matters, now Chinese NGOs such as Friends of Nature, Beijing Global Village, and even my own organization, Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation, are entering the policy sphere.

Not only are these organizations being allowed in, but in fact, their voices are starting to be encouraged by government, as perhaps demonstrated in the Chinese government’s recent white paper on Climate Change (thanks to China Environmental Law Blog for translating!), where the Chinese government specifically noted they they would be working with NGOs in mitigating and adapting to Climate Change.

I look foward to discussing the activities and properties of both Canadian and Chinese NGOs in the field of energy efficiency and climate change, and will make it a theme in this blog to highlight their similiarities and possible synergies.