Achievements of One Decade 2018-2019 Annual Report of Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) for 120 Cities Institute of Public and Natural Resources Defense Council Environmental Affairs (IPE) (NRDC) The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an (IPE) is a registered non-profit environmental international nonprofit environmental organization that research organization based in Beijing. Since its combines the power of more than 3 million members establishment in May 2006, IPE has developed and supporters with the expertise of some 500 lawyers, the Blue Map Database (wwwen.ipe.org.cn), scientists, and other environmental specialists. Since 1970, as well as the Blue Map app, the first Chinese NRDC has worked to protect the world’s natural resources, environmental mobile app to track real-time public health, and environment in countries and regions pollution data, which went live in June 2014. IPE including the United States, China, India, Canada, Mexico, works to promote environmental information Chile, Costa Rica, and the European Union. NRDC is disclosure, public participation, and effective headquartered in New York City and has offices in Beijing; environmental governance strategies. Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Los Angeles; San Francisco and Bozeman, Montana. Authors: Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE): MA Jun, RUAN Qingyuan, GUO Ye, CHEN Yiting, HE Fanghui, ZHU Huaning, ZHU Li, GUO Huaxin, LI Zhenshan, LI Qingfeng, MA Yingying, DING Shanshan, CHEN Qifeng. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): WANG Yan, WU Qi, ZHANG Xiya, YANG Jia, Lena Suponya, Elizabeth Weinlein, QI Bokai English Translation QI Bokai, Elizabeth Weinlein, DING Shanshan, WU Qi, RUAN Qingyuan ： Design CHEN Shuangli ： Acknowledgement: Thanks to the Alibaba Foundation PROJECT XIN, Ai You Foundation, and SEE Foundation for funding this report. The original text and suggestions are those of the author of this report and are not representative of those Foundations. IPE and NRDC would like to thank the following experts for their comments and guidance during the production of the report: JIA Feng, WANG Hua, WANG Canfa, WANG Jin, WANG Bidou, YANG Sujuan, YANG Ke, ZHU Xiao, GUO Hongyan, YAN Houfu and HU Jing. We would also like to thank the local Ecology and Environment Bureaus who are disclosing the information. IPE and NRDC would also like to thank Green Anhui, Green Qilu, Lvse Jiangnan, Fujian Green Home, Jiangxi Environment Communication Centre, Hubei Xingche Environment and our other environmental partners for their participation; and Blue Map volunteers for their contributions of data for evaluation. Table of Contents Introduction / 2 I. The Origin: Where PITI Began / 4 II. Ten-year Assessment: Ratings for 120 Cities over the Years / 7 III. Ten-year Comparison: Historic Progress in Environmental Information Disclosure / 11 1. Moving Towards Full Disclosure of Pollution Source Supervision Information / 11 2. Timely Disclosure of Pollution Source Supervision Information / 16 3. Complete Disclosure of Pollution Source Supervision Information / 18 4. Disclosure of Pollution Source Supervision Information to be Platformized; Ecological and Environmental Public Services to be More User-Friendly / 19 IV. Ten-year Application: Information Disclosure and Innovative Environmental Governance Tools / 21 1. Information Disclosure: Making Green Supply Chain More Effective / 21 2. Information Disclosure: Realizing Dynamic Assessment of Enterprise Environmental Performance / 23 3. Information Disclosure: Promote Public Supervision towards Larger Scale and Longer Term / 24 V. Ten-year Impact: Enhance Social Trust and Foster Green Development / 28 1. Information Disclosure, an Acceleration of Environmental Governance / 28 2. Information Disclosure, to Restrict Compliance and Promote Corporate Responsibility / 30 3. Information Disclosure, to Promote Social Trust / 33 4. Information Disclosure, to Promote Green Transition and Development / 35 VI. Outlook: Great Potential for Information Disclosure / 37 1. From Government Information Disclosure to Enterprise Information Disclosure / 37 2. From Key Enterprises to More General Companies / 38 3. China's First Large-Scale Real-Time Disclosure, to be Consolidated and Expanded / 39 4. From General Pollutants to Characteristic Pollutants / 41 5. From Local Pollutant Disclosure to Carbon Emissions Information Disclosure / 42 6. From Stationary Sources to Mobile Sources / 43 Annex: Assessment Results / 44 2 1OAchievements of One Decade Introduction Since the first PITI report was published in 2009, we have evaluated China's pollution source information disclosure for ten years. Throughout the ten years of continuous data collection and evaluation, we are fortunate to witness the historic progress of China's environmental information disclosure: from the first issue of "Breaking the Ice", to the fourth issue of "New Mindsets, Innovative Solutions", to the ninth issue "Moving towards Normalization", to today's "Achievements of One Decade", the ten titles of the PITI reports reflect the magnificent twists and historic progress of pollution information disclosure in China. The decennial achievements are directly reflected in the increase of data quantity. In 2006, our environment database, the Blue Map Database, could only collect about 2,000 corporate environmental violation records. When the PITI evaluation was launched in 2008, the records rose to 24,000. After ten years of collection and accumulation, the total number of records today is more than 1.6 million, and the total number of enterprise online emissions monitoring data exceeds 1.8 billion. A number of leading cities are achieving “what should be public needs to be made public.” The decennial achievements are clearly reflected by the improvement on data quality. Compared with the beginning of environmental information disclosure in China, most cities have switched from issuing a simple directory or list to issuing a complete administrative penalty decisions; greatly improving the integrity of information disclosure. Most of the information is released in a timely manner, and the real time automatic monitoring data from 23,000 companies is released to the public in real time. At the same time, the disclosure of pollution source information tends to be platformized, which is easier for the public to utilize. Behind the decennial achievements is the institutionalization of information disclosure through laws and regulations. From "Measures for the Disclosure of Environmental Information (Trial)" in 2008, to the "Measures for the Self-Monitoring Information Disclosure by State Monitored Enterprises (Trial)" in 2013, real-time and large-scale online data disclosure was implemented for the first time in the world. Additionally, the new Environmental Protection Law made an unprecedented section dedicated to information disclosure and public participation, establishing China's pollution source supervision information disclosure as comparable to the world's leading information disclosure Annual Report of Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) for 120 Cities 2018-2019 3 regulations. "Openness is the norm, non-disclosure is the exception," has not only been established as a principle, but has also been gradually implemented through regulatory mechanisms. The decennial achievements can also be observed from the perspective of data applications and utilizations. With the strengthening of pollution source environmental supervision, the improvement of information disclosure and the public awareness of the importance of environmental protection, multiple aspects of pollution source information has begun to be applied on a large-scale. From the perspective of IPE and the green supply chain, a number of large-scale brands intensively cooperated with IPE and Green Choice Alliance (GCA) partners. In the past ten years, they have promoted thousands of companies to effectively rectify violations and achieve pollution reductions. From the perspective of social supervision, the Blue Map cooperated with Lvse Jiangnan and other partners to follow tens of thousands of key enterprises, and prompted more than 2,000 companies to publicly explain why they had violated the standards as revealed by online monitoring data. From the aspect of green finance, banks and financial institutions began to adopt big data-based dynamic corporate environmental credit evaluation systems and the banking financial industry has also begun to show great potential in promoting green transformation and low-carbon development. At present, in the face of complicated situations such as the trade wars and economic downturns, we should take into consideration of local situations, instead of "one size fits all" type of polices. We should also prevent deregulation as it may cause bad performers to drive out good performers. There is an urgent need to find innovative solutions that balance environmental protection and economic development. Environmental data is the foundation for new ideas such as differentiated management and precision pollution control, as well as new technological approaches such as artificial intelligence and financial technology. Looking forward to the next ten years, environmental information disclosure needs to continue to expand on the basis of today's solid foundation. First, it needs to expand from disclosure of government supervision information to disclosure of corporate environmental information; from disclosure of