News that's reused
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JULY/AUGUST 2009 ❧ Page 23
Copyright © 2009, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, July/August 2009
noTice & commenT
win the case, but it was an im-
portant case because it illustrated
the community as an active
player in the environmental
movement.
Her ultimate goal as an en-
vironmental lawyer is to bring
lawsuits in the public interest.
Zhang hopes to become the
leading lawyer in environmental
law and climate change, to be a
model for other Chinese lawyers
to develop a similar law practice.
When asked about the most
challenging part of her job, she
described the trial sessions.
“Every moment in the court
room is challenging,” she admit-
ted. Facing the defendants and
lawyers is difficult because there
is obvious tension between both
parties, and opponents treat each
other like enemies.
On top of facing her oppo-
nents during the trial, she said
that the research and preparation
done before every trial takes a lot
of time because a lawyer needs
to know his or her information
thoroughly.
For her cases, Zhang has to
memorize every detail, know all
the environmental standards,
and have the ability to express
ideas clearly for the case.
Even though her work is
exhausting, she says meeting
people in the communities she
is helping is not psychologically
stressful at all.
However, Zhang sees the
changes made in the court
system last year with the Chi-
nese Supreme Court as a step
backward in the judicial reform.
ough she is pessimistic about
the system, she is still optimistic
about the future of the environ-
mental movement. “I believe in
the Chinese people,” Zhang said.
e following excerpt from an ar-
ticle on the “Chinese Erin Brock-
ovich” by Nina Huang is reprinted
from Northwest Asian Weekly:
Jingjing Zhang realized that she
wanted to become a lawyer dur-
ing college. She got involved with
environmental litigation in 1999
when she joined the Center for
Legal Assistance to Pollution Vic-
tims in China, where she currently
serves as its director.
By enforcing environmental
laws and empowering people, she
believes that Chinese citizens are
able to achieve social justice. She
was dubbed the “Erin Brockovich
of China” for representing pol-
lution victims in rural areas of
China.
She participated in the first suc-
cessful environmental class action
suit against a chemical company
that discharged toxic substances
in Fujian province. Because of her
efforts, Zhang is considered a pio-
neer in her field.
ough she has won many
high-level cases, Zhang has admit-
ted that she can’t win every case,
and she is forced to give up on
some of them. For example, she
approached the Tuo River com-
munity in Sichuan province, but
the citizens did not want to go up
against large pollutant corpora-
tions because they thought they
could not win because they per-
ceive the economic gap between
the rich and the poor in China to
be too great, and there is no way
around the Chinese court system.
One of Zhang’s most memo-
rable cases was one against the
Beijing Municipal Commission of
Urban Planning and the Beijing
Environmental Protection Bureau.
Zhang represented the commu-
nity in suing the two government
agencies. She said that they didn’t
NEWS THAT’S REUSED
ture increases of 4-5 degrees C and
above are likely to be catastrophic,”
according to the British economist
Sir Nicholas Stern quoted in the New
York Review of Books.
How bad will it be? “If the planet
warms by 4 degrees C — as it might
this century — it will change beyond
all recognition,” says a special report
published by New Scientist. Four de-
grees may not sound like much, the
publication avers, but “an average
warming of the entire globe by 4 de-
grees C . . . would render the planet
unrecognizable from anything hu-
mans have ever experienced.”
e report describes the world
of 2050: “Alligators basking off the
English coast; a vast Brazilian desert;
the mythical lost cities of Saigon,
New Orleans, Venice, and Mumbai;
and 90 percent of humanity van-
ished. Welcome to the world warmed
by 4 degrees C.” If this happens, “the
ramifications for life on Earth are so
terrifying that many scientists con-
tacted for this article preferred not to
contemplate them, saying only that
we should concentrate on reducing
emissions to a level where such a rise
is known only in nightmares.”
According to the report, “e last
time the world experienced tempera-
ture rises of this magnitude was 55
million years ago.” e culprit, as
feared this time, was the release of
frozen beds of methane., “e already
warm planet rocketed by 5 or 6 de-
grees C, tropical forests sprang up in
ice-free polar regions, and the oceans
turned so acidic from dissolved car-
bon dioxide that there was a vast die-
off of sea life. Sea levels rose to 100
meters higher than today’s and desert
stretched from southern Africa into
Europe.”
Meanwhile, Congress debates
its legislation, and the world awaits
the December meeting of the IPCC
in Copenhagen for perhaps a last
chance to save the planet.
Notice & Comment is written by the editor
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