Legal Strategies of Environmental Activism in China

Feng Ge and Zhao Zhong discuss Environmental Protection Advocacy in China. Lunch will be provided.

This event is hosted by the Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies. 

About the Speakers

Feng Ge is an environmental protection lawyer in China with extensive experience in litigation and policy advocacy. For six years, Ge led the legal department at Friends of Nature, the first environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) in China with national influence. Ge and her colleagues at Friends of Nature played a key role in lobbying for revisions to the Environmental Protection Law that gave NGOs standing to sue polluters in 2015. Since then, Ge and her team have brought nearly fifty environmental public interest lawsuits, including to protect endangered species in Yunnan province, which was later recognized by China’s Supreme People’s Court as a model case and by the United Nations as a Sustainable Development Goal Good Practice. Ge has a doctorate in environmental law from the China University of Political Science and Law and instructed Renmin University Law School’s environmental law clinic from 2017 to 2020. At the Tsai Center, Ge will research citizen suits against ocean polluters, climate change law and litigation, and legal clinical education focused on environmental protection.

Zhong Zhao is the founder and director of Green Camel Bell, a grass-root environmental NGO in Northwest China. At the local level, he conducts a range of programs and projects focusing on environmental education, water pollution monitoring, and community-based eco-agriculture and sustainable development. At the national level, he promotes and researches public participation in environmental decision-making and provides training and mentorship to grassroots partners. At the global level, he bridges Chinese overseas energy and forest investors and impacted communities of host countries promoting responsible green investment. Zhao was a Yale World Fellow in the Fall of 2022. From 2015-16, as a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow, Zhao completed a year of course work and professional affiliation at the University of California, Davis on Natural Resources Management and Climate Change. In 2009, he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and in 2017, he was nominated as an Asia 21 Young Leader by Asia Society. Zhao received his Bachelor’s degree in Electronic and Information Engineering from the Hefei University of Technology and a Master degree of Laws from the University of Hong Kong. At the Tsai Center, Zhao will research public participation in environmental legislation and decision-making and the localization of international environmental law.