Policy Advocacy Conference on Environment and Health

On 21-22 February 2011, the Policy Advocacy Conference on Environment and Health was held in Beijing. It was organized by the China Association for NGO Cooperation (CANGO) and the American Bar Association (ABA), supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.57 representatives from 38 organizations of government departments, NGOs and research institutes attended the conference.

The purpose of this conference was to exchange experiencesand share achievements of organizations and projects focusing on the interlinkage of environment and health. Mr. Huang Haoming, Executive Director of CANGO, and Ms. Hyeon-Ju Rho, Country Director of the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative China Program gave a welcome speech during the opening session. Both of them expressed their acknowledgements to the project partners, supporters and all the participants. Both speakers expect that the project can provide concrete support and help to NGOs in their policy advocacy work.

Ms. Wang Xiangyi, Project Manager of CANGO, introduced the project progress and achievements so as to give the participants a general understanding of the project status. The representatives from four pilot organizations, Ms. Yun Jianli from Green Hanjiang, Mr. HuoDaishan from Huaihe Defender, Ms. Wang Wei from Green Anhui and Ms. Mei Nianshu from Green Kunming gave a presentation to share their pilot project's progress as well as their experiences and challenges. Following thepresentations of the pilot projects , the members of the project's Advisory Committee, Mr. KeShen from Environment and Health Institute of Beijing Jiaotong University, Ms. Jennifer Holdaway from The Social Science Research Council, Mr. Shi Zhongcheng from CANGO and Mr. Mao Gangqiang from Guizhou Association for Community Development, provided comments and suggestions to the pilot projects' implementation, such as the projects' specific objectives and stakeholder analysis.

Concluding the first day of the workshop, Mr. Zhang Boju from Friends of Nature, Ms. Ma Tiannan from Xiamen Green Cross, Ms. Zhang Lingge from Environmental Defense Fund, introduced their experiences and reflection on policy advocacy with difference cases.

The participatory method of 'Open Space' was used on the second day so as to provide opportunity to all the participants to express their ideas. Ms. Karen Lim from Shenzhen LEADERSHIP INC acted as the facilitator. Firstly, all participants reviewed what they learned from the first day, then decided the discussion topic: How I/We (NGOs) Promote Environment and Health through Policy Advocacy . The participants proposed the specific topic they would like to discuss voluntarily and convene to the group members. In total five discussion groups was established, the topics of discussion included the following: turning kitchen waste into a resource; how NGOs from different regions, fields and with different working styles, can cooperate to promote policy advocacy; how NGOs can establish effective communication with government department to promote policy; how to improve the efficiency of information, public access and NGOs participation; how local NGOs respond to the emergency incidents of environmental pollution. Every group shared their discussion results with all participants after discussion.

The evaluation results after the conference showed high recognition among the participants. The experience sharing on the conference was deemed very helpful for their work. They also found some potential cooperation partners through the conference, which shows that the conference was not only a successful learning event, but also offered good networking opportunities.