Building a green community 115
While individual-initiated monitoring activities are helpful in awareness raising
and questioning the authenticity of official data, they usually rely on methods
that are associated with human senses and are limited in their scope of influence.
In comparison, grassroots monitoring activities organized by nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) are more likely to have a stronger impact and potentially
affect official monitoring process or policy making. This is due to the availability
of resources such as equipment and experienced volunteers as well as their
communication networks and access to outside support. With the expansion of
environmental concern and activism in China, newly formed NGOs in recent years
have been engaged in politically sensitive issues, such as anti-dam campaigns and
advocacy for pollution victims (Matsuzawa 2012). Their activities have expanded
from education and volunteering to mass protests and civil litigations, sometimes
leading to confrontations with local authorities and large corporations.
This chapter examines emerging forms of grassroots air quality monitoring in
major cities in China since 2011 that have occurred in response to widespread
concerns regarding urban air pollution. In particular, it reports on NGO-organized
air quality monitoring and blogging activities related to PM2.5, an airborne
particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size, the results of which often
challenge announced data from government environmental agencies. This chapter
explores the information-sharing, awareness-raising, and mobilization aspects of
these initiatives through data gathered from personal interviews, online diaries, and
microblogging of activists. By analyzing their different ways of self-organizing
and member recruitment, both online and on the ground, the chapter also examines
how a green community takes shape and grows during the age of the Internet.
Community-based environmental monitoring
Community-based monitoring (CBM) initiatives by nonprofessionals and citizen
groups concerned about the environment have been growing worldwide, not
only in developed countries such as the United States and Canada but also in
developing countries such as India (Conrad and Hilchey 2011). In many cases,
these grassroots efforts have helped decision makers and NGOs enhance their
ability to monitor and manage natural resources, track species at risk, and
conserve protected areas, contributing relevant information and actions to solving
environmental problems. The growth of CBM activities in recent years is often
due to an increase in public knowledge and concern about anthropogenic impacts
on natural ecosystems and a lack of, or inadequate and incomplete, data and
monitoring initiatives by professional scientists and government agencies (Conrad
and Daoust 2008). Key scholars have argued that local environmental knowledge
and local capacity to conduct environmental monitoring and measurement are
an essential part of sustainable development, as they involve the people who
are most affected by environmental change and contain signals derived from
local systems of observation, practice, and indigenous knowledge (Conrad and
Hilchey 2011). However, there is disagreement about whether social or locally
based knowledge and citizen science projects conducted by non-professionals are