Fen Wang
Sustainable and low-cost sanitation
2009-09-19
NGOs and their impact on sanitation issues in China
Introduction
One central issue in the study of Chinese NGOs is their degree of autonomy from the Chinese state. Many scholarly writings have devoted considerable space to the discussion of this issue, and most studies conclude that Chinese NGOs in general lack autonomy. (Lu Yiyi, 2007)
The registration process for a NGO is arduous, requiring registration with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and also with a sponsoring government department. A problem of scaling up for many organisations is that the possibility of establishing medium to large-size projects is largely dependent on government contacts and connections. (Reza et al., 2008)
Modern China is moving through unprecedented economic growth, but in some cases this improvement in quality of life does not always transfer to the lower classes of population (Miikka Ristkari, 2007), and what is happening now is that within the population there is a huge income gap (JohnWhalley, 2009).
However, it seems that the policy from the top is always sound, but not always so well implemented by the local governments, communities. The central government continues to enact laws to protect the environment, but local officials and business managers are often colluding with each other for personal benefits and avoiding legal liability (Drew Thompson, 2009) though the Swedish International Development Agency’s 2004 report on civil society is highly positive at the prospect of change in China, with help from international organizations and donors (Gough 2004)
The aim of this study is to try to find a better solution for the sanitation issues in rural and marginalized areas. The hypothesis is that more NGOs covering the development of public sanitation in regional and local level in China are needed.
Background
Non-government organizations (NGOs) in
It is true that there will be more and more NGOs, however, these NGOs are relatively young and immature due to the autonomy issues and the lack of strategic planning and the weakness of their internal governance (Reza et al., 2008). As Lu (2005: 17) argues: “The skepticism about what can be achieved plus preoccupation with immediate needs make many people reluctant to devote time and energy to any activity which does not promise quick results or concrete benefit to themselves”, and it seems that the market economy is making people more and more focused on short-term benefits, or “No honey, no money”. Although individual NGOs may have received subsidies, allocations, or donations from various government agencies on an ad hoc basis, there is not yet any institutionalized funding for NGOs from the government (Lu, Yiyi 2003), except those governmental found organizations. The development of NGOs in
Methods
The method used in this report is case study and other relevant literature analysis. Graphs are selected from a student’s thesis work.
Case 1, in
The context of the research done by Miikka Ristkari.
All stakeholders includes the party are interested in the sanitation improvement, but the regional and local government lacks of capacity of implementation and maintenance, especially the village leaders can find lots of excuses for their failures (Miikka Ristkari, 2007)
In figure 1, signal (1) and (2) represents the communications between those organizations.
In figure 2, those circling signs also represent the relevant communications. Municipal government is like city government but under the control of the provincial government, there are always several districts or counties (some cities have both districts and counties) in every city of China, under the districts there are towns but when the county is very big it can be in the same level of districts, under the towns there is villages which is the lowest level. e.g. somebody can be from Shandong Pro.,
Figure 1: Decision-making processes and organizational pathways in
Figure 2:
Results
From figure 1, we can see that the decision-making process is mainly down-scaling; the authoritarian regime is the only decision-maker who takes the responsibility for the public and there is a community environmental protection bureau and an institute involved in the process.
Figure 2 can also illustrate lots of issues:
The 2002 Taishi village dry toilet project failed because there is little or no households and individuals level involvement and the wrong applications of technical solutions. Learned from the failures in 2002, the 2003-2005 Zhonghe village dry toilet pilot project involved the communication at township and village council level, the communication at household and individual level with the help of the sustainable technical solutions, the project was partially successful. The 2005-2007 dry toilet construction project involved large financial support from the government, however, it still did not have very sound result due to the lack of communication at the households, villager and grassroots.
After analyzing the graphs the lack of NGOs in this area was found to be the key for problems-solving.
Discussion
So here are a few questions from figure 1.
All the units showed in this figure are central government related, why there are no NGOs involved?
The conclusion from the Miikka Ristkari et al, (2007) is that the top-down management is predominant but the lack of bottom-up collaboration is the main reason for the failures. However, it seems that Miikka Ristkari is on the right track but who did not address that the lack of monitoring and surveillance from the public is also the causes for the failures due to the possible fear of being against the central government’s will. People probably will argue that the top-down governance is universal, it can be in Sweden or America, but the point is these countries have relatively more freedom, the top government encourages the NGOs and civil society forces to grow and develop, and these civil society organizations also have more freedom from the control of the government and higher independence level, but Chinese NGOs are relatively young compared to the ones in developed countries (Reza et al., 2008), therefore their monitoring over the governmental executive power still needs long way to go, without the transparency how the public can know where the finance goes.
Another government strategy for socializing social welfare is to encourage all kinds of private investment in social services, whether profit-oriented or not (Lu, Yiyi 2003). Now it is clear, the central government wants the NGOs share some burden for the government but also wants their operations under the monitoring and control in conjunction with the NGOs are striving for autonomy and monitoring the government.
There are significant increase of the number of NGOs, diversified in their missions, structures, degree of autonomy and influence, Chinese environmental NGOs can roughly be classified into three major types—student environmental groups, government-organized NGOs and civic environmental NGOs. However, since student environmental groups are directly or indirectly overseen by the university administration or the Communist Youth League, it is difficult for student environmental groups to become political activists in environmental issues (SHUI-YAN et al., 2008), and most of these NGOs were rather be called students society or association, they are remain in the stage of advocacy or raising the awareness of the public that they can possibly reach and from lips into concrete actions they still need far way to go (an interview with a chairman of an association).
There are also governmental found ENGOs which are doing the bottom work for the government or do the work that not suitable for the government, even though they have shown independence in recent years (SHUI-YAN, 2008). Different from student group and government-organized NGOs , civic NGOs are founded and run entirely by private citizens and they are more independent and grassroots-oriented more similar to those ENGOs in the west. However, since their first appearance about a decade ago, the vast majority of civic ENGOs in China have been careful to avoid taking activities that could be considered by the government authorities as oppositional in nature, though there is still some civic environmental NGOs have strived both to maintain their legal status but also to seek patronage from governmental agencies and to engage in some, though limited, degrees of policy advocacy. (SHUI-YAN, 2008) The central government may expect truly societal NGOs to provide an expert voice only and their role, as seen by the state, is deliberative and directed towards the solution of problems in official arena or towards the provision of information for official use and their relations to the government is cooperative rather than pressuring (Taru Salmenkari 2008).
Although association is important to many NGOs themselves, it is questionable whether it is for the state. For example, when the local government consulted an unregistered environmental NGO about its plan to start organic farming in the area, the local government hardly saw it as differing from consulting an individual, such as a professor or technician, with the relevant expertise. One interviewee even noted that the government sees NGOs as individuals influencing the government, not as a legally protected form of organization mandated to represent a group. (Taru Salmenkari 2008) and very limited studies can show that there is enough NGOs involved in sanitation projects such as the toilet project above. Although NGOs mostly adjust to fit a certain officially promoted pattern, there is no single path leading up to it. Some NGOs harbor ambitions of building social power, but they adapt to their sociopolitical environment and do what is possible at the time. (Taru Salmenkari 2008) Although NGOs adapt to the mass-line model because of the sociopolitical environment in
About international NGOs, in the beginning they are trying to get public’s attention by some radical movement or activity (e.g. Green Peace’s campaign in front of Tiananmen in 1995, the protestors were arrested by the police in a few seconds and be driven out of China shortly afterwards), so after years of adaptation of the Chinese environment most international NGOs are trying to avoid the conflicts with the government for survival reasons (Robyn et al., 2006).
If the goals of ENGOs and the government are different, the work of ENGOs will be in vain, if the goals of the government and the economical departments are different, the work of ENGOs will also be worthless, therefore win-win solutions are always necessary between the ENGOs and the government. (Robyn Wexler et al., 2006)
It was also be stressed by (SHUI-YAN, 2008) that the increasing forces from the middle class will surely speed up the democratization in China, though the mass organizations are still not capable of providing the basis and demands for democracy in China, but the emerging government-imposed restrictions, the dominance of market forces, increased marginalized interests in society, the emergence of the internet and international aid have greatly affected the development of NGOs and civil society in China, these happening events will also turn back their influences on environmental security and sanitation development, because when there is a issue, the public will not simply waiting for the government to take care of, they can also resort to local NGOs, and this is the reason how important the development of civil society forces is.
The governments are no longer mainly focused on politics and military issues, the world is changing till the present that climate, technology, internet all contribute for more issues, so the involvement of politicians, scientists, NGOs will be all necessary for problem-solving, such as sanitation issues since it concern citizen’s livelihood, and to handle the issues the knowledge of health, ecology, economy, technology and so on will all be taken account to.
Conclusion
The sanitation and health issues are highly concerned with the livelihood of people. And from the two figures above we can see that there is no any NGOs involved, therefore I propose a possible solution for better sanitation in the future is to create a power-sharing regime, e.g. more and more trustable NGOs who can collaborate with the different levels of governments, institutions, grassroots, who can also provide a better monitoring and surveillance system, which can also be supported by that the top-down management and huge up-scaling without human resources to handle local management does not work with projects that involve local communities on sensitive issues (Miikka Ristkari, 2007).
From the discussion mentioned above, it can be concluded that there will be a huge stage for the researchers, experts, institutions, think-tanks, NGOs to perform, NGOs can be one of the stages.
With the help of ENGOs, the indigenous and rural grassroots will have new hopes for a better quality life which can not simply attained by waiting the central government to take care of them. When ENGOs gradually win more and more trust from people, there will be more support from the public, so the financial issues will be possibly solved by that the public are willing to pay some money for a better quality life. Maybe there will be lots of ENGOs participate in the projects that deal with sanitation issues.
References
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URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/
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