A great deal has been written about the struggles to resolve China’s overwhelming environmental problems, but I have seen no better or more visceral portrayal of these issues than The Warriors of Qiugang, a short documentary film by Academy Award-winners Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon that is being broadcast in full at the Yale e360 website beginning today. The film, shot over four years mostly in a village near the Huai River in eastern Anhui Province, captures a series of indelible scenes of the efforts of one village to stop pollution from local chemical factories that blackened rivers, killed fish, and sickened the local populace. The film portrays the deep complexities and challenges of obtaining justice and halting environmental degradation in rural China, but ultimately ends on a note of hope when the villagers succeed in having the main local polluter moved away to a nearby industrial park. The victory does not make up for the polluted farmland and illness caused, but it is a victory nonetheless. Moreover, it provides a glimpse at one of the paths that China has begun to take to turn its environmental crisis around: with local villagers willing to stand forward, the collaboration of local and Beijing-based environmental activists, journalists shining a light on local malfeasance, and a central Ministry of Environmental Protection beginning to utilize a range of new enforcement tools to put pressure on local polluters.
Over the last six years, we have worked with environmental lawyers, environmental groups, journalists, and government officials in China on ways to strengthen enforcement of environmental law, and the elements of the Qiugang story are familiar ones. A few observations:
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