Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 259

formally registered provincial environmental NGOs in 2002, in addi-
tion to district-level, county-level and unregistered environmental
NGOs. These NGOs, of which the majority are provincial or local
ones, often are not very adversarial or confrontational, but, rather,
are expert or awareness-raising organisations, such as Global Village.
The 'political room' for a Western-style environmental movement still
seems limited, but compared to a decade ago this room is expanding. In
addition, Stalley and Yang ( 2006 ) show that there is also little interest
from potential participants (in their case, university students) in join-
ing and supporting environmental NGOs, resulting in small numbers of
volunteers and supporters. In China, the contribution of environmen-
tal NGOs in pushing for environmental reform of the Chinese econ-
omy or polity has been marginal until now. International NGOs, such
as Greenpeace and the WWF, have invested major efforts in further
stimulating the environmental movement in China, with ambivalent
successes.
In Vietnam, the situation of independent NGOs is worse. In addition
to a few international environmental NGOs such as ENDA (which are
only allowed if they cooperate with and not act against the govern-
ment), Vietnam has only GONGOs and expert groups, the latter often
related to universities. Registration of and governmental control over
domestic NGOs or social organisations is more strict than in China.
But in both countries, civil society is involved in various forms of infor-
mational governance, although often distinct from OECD countries.
We will first look at complaint systems and subsequently focus on the
conventional and the new media.
Civil society and informational pressures
Together with economic liberalisation, decentralisation of decision
making, and experiments with local democratisation, one can wit-
ness a growing pressure of - often unorganised - citizens on local
(environmental) authorities to reduce environmental pollution. Indi-
vidual citizens, communities, local organisations and the media have
been encouraged to come with independent information on pollution,
among others, via various complaints systems. Dasgupta and Wheeler
difficult to compare with OECD country statistics. Registrations in Vietnam
differ from this.