Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 255

100000

China Vietnam

10000

1000

100

10

1

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Year

Figure 10.2. Companies with ISO 14001 certifications in China and Vietnam,
1996-2005 ( source: http://www.iso.org/iso/).

of economic globalisation processes and/or an emerging global civil
society. As an example, and in line with Chapter 7 ,wewill elaborate
on food labels and certifications.
In China, a significant number of domestic green, organic and
healthy label programs have started in the field of food products (but
also on energy conservation, water conservation and building mate-
rials). 35 With respect to the broad category of green food, the China
Green Food Development Centre (established in 1992 under the Min-
istry of Agriculture) and the China Green Food Association (in 1996,
also under MoA) have been active (with more than three thousand
certified Green Food producers in 2002; Tracy, 2005 ), whereas for
organic food the Organic Food Certification Centre (under MoA) and
the Organic Food Development Centre of China (since 1994, under
SEPA) carry out inspections and certifications of national standards
and were present in over one-third of the provinces in 2005. Although
a small domestic market does exist for especially green food prod-
ucts and to a lesser extent organic products (UNESCAP, 2002 ), most
of the organic food production is for the international, Western mar-
kets, using well-recognized labelling and certification schemes. 36

The

35

Cf. Guo, 2005 ; Qian Yi et al., 2001 ; UNESCAP, 2002 ;Tracy, 2005 . See also
the Web site of SEPA: http://www.sepa.gov.cn. Healthy food is food produced
with a basic safety line to ensure health and food safety. Green food,
introduced in 1990 by the Ministry of Agriculture, refers to 'safe' food
produced according to strict standards of pesticides and fertilizers. Organic
food production uses no pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

36

The value of Chinese organic food exports in 2003 was about US$142 million,
with more than one thousand farms and companies certified. The following