作者：楊國彬(Guobin Yang)
首發於光明觀察，轉載請註明譯者及出處；本譯文僅供參考，引用請查對原文。
原編者按：資本主義不是唯一風行中國的"主義"。上世紀90年代早期以來，中國同沙塵暴、森林砍伐、流域水汙染以及其它問題的鬥爭引起了國內外環保組織的關注。1992年里約地球峰會（Rio Earth Summit）之後，北京政府籤署了致力於可持續發展的承諾。中國學者楊國斌認為，從那以後，一批雙邊援助機構、發展銀行和國際非政府組織一直在支持中國本土的環保主義。網際網路日益廣泛的普及為中國的環保主義者提供了一個充滿活力的一起討論不公平和爭論解決辦法的空間，如果說從政治上看它還不太穩定。然而，即使有國外環保組織在虛擬空間和現實生活兩方面的影響，楊認為，中國的環保主義者的工作議程和關注焦點仍然具有獨特的中國背景。楊說，如果他們要成功地處理中國迫切的環境問題，他們必須在全球影響和本土領導之間找到恰當的平衡。
華盛頓：如果近來某天你發現自己在北京一家快餐店，你可能會看到如下場面：一位看上去很職業化的女性走進餐館點了菜，從挎包中掏出一雙筷子，開始進餐。猜猜她為什麼不用桌上的一次性筷子？原來她是一位致力於拯救林木的環保主義者。
環保主義在上世紀90年代很多衝擊中國"主義"中的一種--如消費主義、物質主義、民族主義、以及資本主義。它的核心觀念是一種全球化了的可持續發展話語。因此，環保主義的誕生昭示著全球環保主義來到中國。儘管歷史不長，它正在對中國的政治和社會發揮著某些影響。
首先，環保主義已經在各種文化形式中找到了它的表達方式，例如，設在北京的環境文學研究會已經出版了數種環境題材的文學作品叢書。叢書收入了一些當代中國知名作家的作品。報紙上的環境報導數量也在上升。調查顯示，1994年中國報紙平均發表125篇有關環境問題的文章，到1999年這一數字已經增長到630篇。電視和電臺的環境節目已經很普通了。隨著網際網路的傳播，環境網站如雨後春筍般地湧現。作為這種文化活躍現象的結果，"綠色話語"（greenspeak）已經進入中文語彙中。生物多樣性、轉基因食品、綠色消費、以及動物權利都已成為熱門的公眾話題。
環保主義還在中國找到了組織基礎。過去10年間出現了約100個非政府環保組織（NGOs），這還不包括數千家由政府組織的NGOs（這樣說是因為它們是由政府組織資助的）。另外，大約有200個學生環境協會---NGOs的雛形---活躍在大學校園內。
這些組織帶頭掀起一場靜悄悄的底層環保運動，致力於喚起良知、解決問題，甚至大力提倡。例如，北京的"自然之友"到農村學校教孩子們關於環境保護的知識。同樣設在北京的汙染受害者法律援助中心自1998年成立以來一直為汙染受害者提供法律援助。它的電話熱線已經收到數以千計詢問環境法律問題的電話。重慶市的環境志願者協會向社會發布了與三峽工程有關的生態問題報告。一些組織發起了大規模的保護溼地和瀕危物種的運動。其它組織則揭露違反環境法的企業。
如何評估中國的環保主義的發展程度？時間安排（Timing）是至關重要的，而這正是訴說全球化故事的地方。在上世紀90年代，許多國內外的事件促使中國進一步融入國際社會，拓寬了國內政治空間，推動了環保主義的發展。
首先，隨著1992年鄧小平"南巡"期間對經濟改革成果的讚揚，中國加快了融入世界市場體系的步伐。1992年里約地球峰會之後，中國政府在1994年3月公布的"中國21世紀議程"白皮書中發表了它的可持續發展戰略。自那以後發布了大量的環境法律和政策，引導著一些分析家去觀察中國國家的"綠色運動"（greening）。
90年代，多邊銀行、雙邊援助機構以及國際非政府組織湧入中國，為中國非政府組織帶來了資金、項目、專家和合法性。1995年，聯合國世界婦女大會通過非正常途徑將國際非政府組織文化帶入中國。聯合國大會開始前的非政府組織婦女論壇雖然被中國政府安排到北京之外的一個交通不便的郊區城鎮，但它仍然將國際非政府組織的活力展現給中國公眾，賦予中國與會者直接面對公眾和組織網絡的經驗。
中國存在著嚴重的環境問題--如沙塵暴、溫室氣體排放、跨國界水域汙染、以及森林砍伐。深化對這些問題的認識加強了中國與世界的聯繫。許多國際環境非政府組織，如世界野生動物基金會（WWF）、生態箴言（Ecologia）、太平洋環境（Pacific Environment）、以及地球之友（Friends of Earth）等等已經在中國開展了項目，並設立了辦公室。甚至激進的綠色和平組織現在北京也設有一個辦事處。2003年11月，綠色和平組織的執行主管傑德-萊坡爾德（Gerd Leipold）還在北京大學作了一次公開講演。
1990年代也見證了網絡用戶和網絡文化的急劇增長，2003年12月中國網際網路用戶增加到8000萬戶。在眾多的民間組織中，中國的環保主義者是最先擁抱網際網路，並以此來推進他們事業的人士之一。在一個統治嚴密的政治體系中，網際網路為這樣的民間社會行為提供了相對自由的空間。一些環保組織依靠網際網路生存，其組織的認同與網站緊密相連。
雖然中國的政治體系總體上不歡迎非官方渠道的滲透，兩種重要的社會趨勢已經出現，表明了人們對環境的關注。一是有關環境問題的爭論範圍和程度在擴大。其範圍涉及從環境權利和動物權力到奢侈生活方式的倫理缺失等方面。另一個趨勢是非政府組織領導的民間行動的增多，如環境觀察、社區垃圾回收活動以及在農村學校的教育項目。
公眾爭論有助於提高環境意識和解決具體問題。它們也具有政治影響，因為它們的發展既反映了也推進了公民社會的成長。此外，非政府組織還可作為民主參與的實驗室。比如唐錫陽發起的綠色營活動，這是一個面向大學生的年度夏令營，旨在向中國的年輕一代提供民主實踐的培訓。他說，"沒有真正的民主生活，就不會有永久的綠水青山。"成立於1996年的綠色營已經培訓了足夠的年輕環保主義者，綠色營也被打趣地稱為"中國環保運動的西點軍校。"
儘管有著來自全球的激勵，中國的環保主義並不只是一種簡單的模仿運動。中國的環保主義者有著一種本土的熱望，就是在如佛教和道教的東方哲學傳統上，為可持續發展的全球話語找到根基。這些傳統強調人與自然的和諧，反對以人類為中心的對待環境方式，並奉勸人類在自然面前保持謙卑。這些理念使得全球生態思想與中國本土更加親近。
中國的環保主義者還強烈在希望在當地條件下為環保主義找到基礎。例如，雖然中國最近開發西部的政策包含了環境保護內容，一些非政府組織強調環境保護不僅應該包括物種保護，還應包括當地文化和社區的保護。哈西-扎西多傑（Haxi Zhaxiduojie），青海省的雪域三江（Snowland Great Rivers）環境保護協會的藏族領導，2002年在北京舉行的一次非政府組織論壇上清楚地表達了這種觀點。他認為在少數民族地區，生物多樣性和文化多樣性的保護"應該得到同等的對待"，而且決策過程"應該有當地民眾參與"。
然而，在為本土志向奮鬥和迎接當地挑戰的過程中，中國的環保主義者不能隨拋棄全球環保主義的後果。可持續發展的全球話語為本地環保主義者在嚴格的政治條件下運作提供了象徵性的空間。它還可以為推進民主實踐和價值提供一種保護傘式的詞令。除了它的形式價值外，全球環保主義有著自己的組織基礎，可為中國的環保主義者提供精神和物質支持。簡而言之，如果說環保主義坐著全球化的過街花車來到中國，為了生存和發展起見，它應當繼續與全球運動保持聯繫。
楊國斌是伍德羅-威爾遜國際學者中心（Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars）的成員和夏威夷-馬努阿大學（the University of Hawaii-Manoa）的社會學副教授。他曾撰寫過幾篇文章，探討網際網路在中國公民社會發展中的作用。
附：原文及網址：
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=3250&page=2Proposal to UST
Capitalism is not the only '-ism' flourishing in China today. Since the early 1990s, the country's battles against dust storms, deforestation, watershed pollution, and other problems have attracted the attention of both domestic groups and foreign environmental organizations. The government in Beijing signaled its official commitment to sustainable development after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Since then, says China scholar Guobin Yang, an array of bilateral aid agencies, development banks, and international non-governmental organizations has bolstered homegrown Chinese activism. The ever-widening diffusion of the internet has also granted Chinese environmentalists a vibrant, if politically precarious, space to come together to discuss grievances and debate solutions. Yet even with the influence of foreign organizations in cyberspace and on the ground, Yang argues, Chinese activists have agendas and concerns that are particular to the Chinese context. If they are to succeed in addressing China's urgent environmental problems, Yang says, they must find the right balance of global input and local leadership. - YaleGlobal
Global Environmentalism Hits China
International and domestic groups join forces to combat environmental woes
Guobin Yang
YaleGlobal, 4 February 2004
WASHINGTON: If one of these days you find yourself in a fast food restaurant in Beijing, you might witness the following: A professional-looking woman sails into the restaurant, makes her order, and fishes out a pair of chopsticks from her purse, with which she begins to eat. Guess why she doesn't touch the disposable chopsticks on the table? Well, she is an environmentalist committed to saving trees.
Environmentalism is one of many "isms" - consumerism, materialism, nationalism, and capitalism - that hit China in the 1990s. Its linchpin notion is the globalized language of sustainable development. The birth of environmentalism thus signals the arrival of global environmentalism in China. Despite its short history, it is already exerting influences on Chinese politics and society.
First, environmentalism has found expression in various cultural forms. The Beijing-based Environmental Literature Research Society, for example, has published several series of literary works on environmental themes. The series involve some of the best-known writers in China today. Environmental reporting in the newspapers is also on the rise. One survey shows that while on average Chinese newspapers carried only 125 articles on environmental issues in 1994, the number had grown to 630 by 1999. Television and radio programs about the environment have become common features. With the diffusion of the Internet, environmental websites have mushroomed. As a result of this cultural effervescence, a "greenspeak" has entered the Chinese vocabulary. Biodiversity, GM foodstuffs, green consumption, and animal rights have all become hot public topics. (See "Global Anti-GM Sentiment Slows China's Biotech Agenda").
Environmentalism has also found an organizational base in China. Over the past decade, about 100 environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have cropped up, not including the thousands of government-organized NGOs, so called because they are sponsored by government agencies. Additionally, about 200 student environmental associations - fledgling NGOs - are active on college campuses.
These organizations are spearheading a quiet grassroots environmental movement engaged in consciousness-raising, problem-solving, and even advocacy. For example, the Beijing-based Friends of Nature goes to rural schools to teach children about environmental protection. The Center for Legal Aid to Pollution Victims, also in Beijing, has provided legal assistance to pollution victims since its establishment in 1998. Its telephone hotline has received thousands of calls about environmental legal issues. The Green Volunteer League in Chongqing city, Sichuan province, publicizes the ecological problems related to the Three Gorges Dam project. Several organizations have launched large-scale campaigns to protect wetlands and endangered species. Others have exposed business enterprises that violated environmental laws.
How to account for the growth of environmentalism in China? Timing is crucial, and this is where the globalization story comes in. In the 1990s, a host of domestic and international events integrated China further into the world community, widening domestic political spaces and boosting environmentalism.
First, with Deng Xiaoping's "Southern tour" in 1992, during which he sang the virtues of economic reform, China accelerated its integration into the world market system. Then, following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the Chinese government published its strategies for sustainable development in a "China Agenda 21" white paper issued in March 1994. A large body of environmental laws and policies has since been promulgated, leading some analysts to observe the "greening" of the Chinese state.
In the 1990s, multilateral banks, bilateral aid agencies, and international NGOs poured into China, bringing funding, projects, expertise, and legitimacy to Chinese NGOs. In 1995, the UN World Conference on Women smuggled international NGO culture into China through the back door. The NGO Forum on Women before the UN Conference, although relegated by the Chinese government to the inconvenience of a suburban town outside Beijing, nonetheless brought the vigor of international NGOs to public view in China and gave Chinese participants direct exposure and networking experience.
A growing awareness of China's grave environmental problems - like dust storms, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution of trans-border watersheds, and deforestation - has increased China's connections to the world. Many international environmental NGOs, such as WWF, Ecologia, Pacific Environment, and Friends of Earth, have set up projects or opened offices in China. Even the radical Greenpeace now has an office in Beijing. As recently as November 2003, its executive director, Gerd Leipold, even gave a public lecture at Beijing University.
The 1990s also saw the dramatic growth of an Internet population and culture, with the number of Internet users rising to 80 million in December 2003. Of the numerous citizen groups, China's environmentalists were among the first to embrace the Internet to advance their cause. In a draconian political system, cyberspace offers relatively free spaces for such civil society activities. Some environmental groups depend on the Internet for existence, with organizational identities closely tied to their websites.
Although China's political system generally does not welcome input through unofficial channels, two important public trends have emerged that reveal people's concerns about the environment. One is the growing range and intensity of public debates on environmental issues. These could range anywhere from environmental rights and animal rights to the ethical lapses of extravagant lifestyles. The other trend is the rise of NGO-led citizen action, such as environmental monitoring, community recycling campaigns, and educational projects in rural schools.
Global Environmentalism Hits China
Public debates and citizen action contribute to environmental consciousness-raising as well as tackling concrete problems. They have political consequences too, for their development both reflects and boosts the growth of civil society. Furthermore, NGOs may serve as laboratories of democratic participation. Tang Xiyang, founder of Green Camp, an annual summer camp for college students, hopes to provide training in democratic practices to China's younger generation. As he puts it, "without real democratic life, there will not be everlasting green rivers or mountains." Inaugurated in 1996, Green Camp has graduated enough young environmentalists to be jokingly dubbed the "West Point of China's environmental movement."
For all its global inspiration, environmentalism in China is not a just a copycat movement. For Chinese environmentalists, one local aspiration is to ground the global discourse of sustainable development in eastern philosophical traditions such as Buddhism and Daoism. These traditions stress the harmony between humans and nature, reject human-centered approaches to the environment, and admonish humility before nature. These ideas bring global ecological thinking closer home.
Chinese environmentalists also aspire to ground environmentalism in local conditions. For example, while China's recent policy to develop its western regions has an environmental protection component, some NGOs have stressed that environmental protection should entail not only the protection of species, but also of local cultures and communities. Haxi Zhaxiduojie, a Tibetan leader of the Snowland Great Rivers Environmental Protection Association in Qinghai province, articulated this vision at an NGO forum in Beijing in October 2002. He argues that in minority regions, the protection of biodiversity and cultural diversity "should receive equal respect" and that policy-making "should involve local people."
In striving for local aspirations and meeting local challenges, however, Chinese environmentalists cannot afford to abandon global environmentalism. The global discourse of sustainable development offers symbolic room for local environmentalists to maneuver under strict political conditions. It can serve as a protective umbrella term for promoting democratic practices and values. In addition to its symbolic power, global environmentalism has its own organizational base, which provides solidarity and material support to Chinese environmentalists. In short, if environmentalism arrived in China on the bandwagon of globalization, for its survival and growth it should stay connected to the global movement.
Guobin Yang (yangguo@wwic.si.edu) is a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He is the author of several articles on the role of the Internet in civil society development in China.
Rights:
2004 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
文章來源：譯者賜稿