Environmental Security and Governance at the Water-Energy Nexus: Greenpeace in India and China

Revised Submission Draft

Environmental Security and Governance at the Water / Energy

Nexus: Greenpeace in China and India

1. Introduction:

In August 2012, Greenpeace India and Greenpeace East Asia

released coordinated but independent reports that addressed

the impacts of energy sector development on national water

security in India and in China. Each of these reports argued

that ongoing and planned construction of coal-based power

plants for economic development was unsustainable at the

expense of finite water resources for agriculture, industry

and domestic consumption.1 Each report was followed in 2013,

with a more specific case study of environmental security at

the coal-water nexus.

Issues of environmental security are both emergent and highly

complex. They are emergent because of the interactive impacts

on environmental security of dynamic global and regional

trends. In the Asia-Pacific region these include rapid

economic development and the demand for natural resources,

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population growth (especially in South Asia), pollution,

poverty, and climate change. They are complex because the

issues of environmental security and governance are multi-

minded, with many independent decision makers impacting one

another, and because they are characterized by patterns of

circular causation, or feedback, leading to possible tipping

points which can rapidly change the state of the environmental

security system (Dasgupta and Ehrlich 2013).

The coal-water nexus provides an example of that complexity,

wherein increased burning of coal for electric power increases

the demand for water in extraction, transportation, cooling,

and pollution abatement, while increasing atmospheric

greenhouse gas concentrations that can impact the hydrologic

cycle and the availability of water for agriculture or human

consumption. Thus, societies must mediate demands for

industrial development and economic security on the one hand

and for environmental security on the other, posing evolving

challenges to institutions for security governance.

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The concept of comprehensive security provides a frame for

understanding issues of environmental security at the coal-

water nexus. Hsiung provides a concise description of the

concept: ‘A nation's security is no longer the traditional

“national defense” (military security) but has economic,

environmental, and human dimensions as well (separately known

as economic security, environmental security, and human

security). All three dimensions may be subsumed under the

rubric of “comprehensive security,” a new umbrella concept

that grew out of the post-Cold War debate over the

ramifications of security and over security studies as a field

of inquiry’ (2004, p. 1).

Associated with the concept of comprehensive security is an

emerging theoretical perspective of security governance that

‘…describes the development from the centralized security

system of the Cold War era to the increasingly fragmented and

complex security structures of today’ (Krahman 2003, p. 5).

Much of the literature on security governance addresses the

growing role of non-state actors in areas of international

governance. Krahman, for example, notes that, although states

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retain a central role in international security, ‘…governments

seem increasingly willing to rely on the cooperation and

resources of non-state actors’ (p. 6). Specific to

environmental security, Bernhardt and Vanderheiden argue that

‘It is now common to speak of “governance without government”

in reference to the role played by non-state actors in global

environmental politics…’ (2012, p. 1). Certain large

environmental NGOs, including Greenpeace, operate across

levels of governance from local to national to international.

Hanggi recognizes that governance at the state and provincial

levels is exercised mostly by governments, but then elaborates

that ‘…governance is more encompassing than government; it

helps to grapple with the complex reality of the contemporary

world in which governments are still the central actors in

domestic and international affairs though they increasingly

are seen to share authority with non-state actors on multiple

levels of interaction’ (2003, p. 6-7). At the level of the

nation-state then, governments may govern, but good governance

implies the ability of non-state actors to influence

government policies to the benefit of the public interest.

This is consistent with the understanding of the United

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Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the

Pacific (UNESCAP), which has described good governance as an

(ideal) process of decision making that is participatory,

consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive,

effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive, while

responsive to both the present and future needs of society.

By encouraging governments’ transparency, responsiveness and

inclusivity, then, NGOs can comprise an important element of

good governance in managing the complex issues of

environmental security at multiple levels. We can explore that

role by looking at two recent campaigns concerned with the

coal-water nexus in India and China, undertaken by the

regional arms of an important international non-governmental

organization. In August 2012, the Greenpeace India Society

(2012c) produced a report entitled Endangered Waters: Impacts of Coal-

fired Power Plants on Water Supply, which argued that, ‘By choosing

thermal power in an increasingly water-stressed nation, India

is endangering its energy security’ (p. 5). That same month,

Greenpeace East Asia released its report. Thirsty Coal: A Water Crisis

Exacerbated by China’s New Mega Coal Power Bases, which concluded that,

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‘…these water intensive projects will inevitably trigger a

serious water crisis and exacerbate existing water scarcity

problems’ (2012a, p. 1).

As the world’s largest developing nations, India and China

face similar challenges to governance in balancing economic

and environmental security. Both nations face significant

concerns about fresh water availability. Both are supporting

their economic development by rapidly building large, coal-

burning power plants that will place significant additional

demands on water resources. In both nations, national,

provincial, and municipal governments play sometimes

conflicting roles in representing stakeholders and in

addressing environmental and economic development needs.

Governmental decisions in both nations will impact local

people, communities, and livelihoods in the areas being

developed. In both countries, as described below, civil sector

organizations are playing an evolving role in informing and

influencing environmental security governance at the coal-

water nexus.

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India is the world’s largest democracy with a robust civil

sector and a history of NGOs predating independence in 1947

(Taneja, 2010). China is a one-party state, where NGOs were

largely unknown before 1995, and where ‘…the legal framework

for NGOs is rather hampering than fostering their development’

(Lehrack, 2006, p. 12). A comparative look at the ways in

which NGOs have sought to influence and inform governments and

other actors at the coal-water nexus can provide insight to

the potential roles of these civil sector organizations in

promoting effective environmental governance across the Asia-

Pacific region.

2. Fossil energy and water resources. Developing countries in Asia

face a rapidly growing need for energy at a time when economic

development, population growth, and the impacts of global

climate change are placing increasing demands on fresh water

resources. According to the World Resources Institute, China

and India together account for 76 per cent of proposed new

coal power generation worldwide (Yang & Cui, 2012, p. 1).

Because of the direct and indirect water demands of these

plants, ‘Asia’s most populous nations will have to reconsider

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energy projects to avoid conflicts between cities, farmers and

industry’ (Pearson, 2012, para. 3).

The generation of electricity by burning coal consumes

substantial volumes of water. The exact amount of water needed

to produce a unit of electricity varies with the type of

mining, the mode of transportation, the design of the plant,

and the quality of the coal. Researchers at Virginia Tech,

for example, have calculated that in the U.S. production of

coal requires 530 – 2,100 liters of water per megawatt-hour

(MWh) of power generated, and the generation of electricity

from that coal requires another 14,200 – 28,400 liters per MWh

(Jones, 2008). Moreover, process water that is discharged at

various stages will carry toxic waste products into the

environment unless they are removed (Union of Concerned

Scientists 2013, USEPA 2012). In addition to their impact on

water resources, these processes release greenhouse gases,

sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury into the

atmosphere, and produce coal ash as a solid waste.

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Thus, we can characterize the dilemma of economic security at

the expense of environmental security as the core of the coal-

water nexus. Balancing these competing goods among the

interests of various stakeholders is a challenge to governance

in any nation. Mining, transportation, power generation, and

environmental protection are generally regulated and/or

operated by national governments and generally managed by

different ministries.

Provincial, regional or local authorities will also have a

role, as do corporate entities that carry out the activities,

whether privately or state owned. Thus the context for

environmental security governance will vary nationally. As

such, a comparison of national reports on a common topic by

related NGOs can tell us something about the challenges to the

roles of non-state actors in environmental governance.

3. NGOs and environmental governance

a. Global trends. Environmental governance presents

challenges at all levels – local, provincial, national,

regional, and global with different but overlapping concerns.

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In recent years, NGOs worldwide have played an emergent role

in environmental governance at the global level in the face of

climate change (Bernhardt and Vanderheiden 2012, p. 4). But

major international environmental NGOs (ENGOs) often operate

at multiple levels, seeking to influence policy at national

and international levels and often engaging in operational

support at local and provincial levels.

There is no standard typology of ENGOS. In a 2002 study,

Gemmill and Bamidele-Izu categorized six roles that ENGOs play

as a contribution to global environmental governance: 1)

information collection, 2) analysis and dissemination, 3)

input to policy making, 4) operational performance to

implement policies, 5) assessment of environmental conditions

and monitoring of compliance, and 6) advocacy of environmental

justice. Consistent with this categorization, Yaziji and Doh

(2009) distinguish service and advocacy NGOs, but they point

out that some organizations pursue both activities and that an

organization’s focus may shift from one to the other.

Although Unmuessig has argued that, ‘The engagement of civil

society in climate policy is more fragmented and varied than

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ever,’ the distinction of service and advocacy functions

provides a useful analytic framework (2011, last para.).

Non-governmental organizations operate in symbiosis with the

state. Their existence is based on a presumption that there is

a civil sector beyond the domain of state institutions. The

very term ‘non-governmental,’ was devised by the United

Nations in 1945, to distinguish such civil sector

organizations from government agencies (Willetts, 2002). But

NGOs’ status and scope of activity are subject to control by

the nations within which they operate. National sovereignty,

therefore, may present a challenge to the organization and

activities of international NGOs (INGOs) that work to address

inherently transnational issues.

China and India face the challenges of environmental security

from rather different historical and ongoing patterns of

governance. India, a former British colony, is the world’s

largest parliamentary democracy. Some civil sector

environmental organizations can trace their origins to the

colonial period. China is a one-party state where governance

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depends on the approval of the party. Environmental INGOs have

operated in China since 1980 and domestic ENGOs since 1994.

Environmental INGOs are active in both countries today in both

advisory and advocacy roles. In both countries, international

engagement originated with concerns about nature conservancy

and wildlife protection, notably for tigers in India (Agarwal,

2008. P. 936) and for pandas in China (Futrell, 2008, p. 163).

Greenpeace established regional organizations in India in 2000

and in Hong Kong in 1997, with a Beijing office established in

2002.

According to a February, 2010, interview by Gavin Edwards,

then head of Greenpeace’s international climate campaign, the

organization believed that it needed to work in India and

China to have a truly global movement. Their approach was to

foster a strong local presence and to avoid any impression of

a Western organization dictating to local people. Nonetheless,

Greenpeace International does coordinate efforts across

regional organizations. When asked about Greenpeace

International’s plans for the coming year, Edwards replied

that there would be a focus on coal, with efforts to identify

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opportunities and needs to block new coal plants worldwide.

Thus, in the fall of 2012, Greenpeace India, Greenpeace East

Asia and Greenpeace Africa each released coordinated but

independent reports that addressed coal’s threat to national

water resources. The results of these reports were integrated

with data from the U.S. and Europe to comprise a Greenpeace

International briefing at the 2012 Doha Conference of the

Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Greenpeace International, 2012). They

were supplemented with follow-on reports in 2013, further

reflecting the nature of Greenpeace’s engagement with China

and India.

b. China: The emergence of civil sector organizations in

a single party state. Beginning with the establishment of

Friends of Nature in 1994, more than 3,500 ENGOs were

operating in China by 2012 (Liu, 2012). This includes 54

INGOs with programs in the environmental sector (China

Development Brief, [2013]). Most of these INGOs are concerned

with nature conservation and wildlife protection, but the

emergence of climate change as an international issue,

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together with China’s rapid economic development and energy

use, has engaged a growing number of INGOs in areas of

environmental security and climate change (Futrell 2008, p.

181). INGOs including the Nature Conservancy, the Natural

Resources Defense Council, the Energy Foundation, and the

EcoLinx Foundation routinely work with Chinese government

officials to influence environmental policy and legislation

and to provide technical assistance and policy-relevant

studies to national and local governments (Ford, 2012;

Futrell, 2008).

The status of INGOs in China can be tenuous and their

activities are contingent on the acceptance of the national

government and thus the Chinese Communist Party. As Ford puts

it, ‘…the truth is that INGOs operate largely on Chinese terms

with regard to project goals and methods’ (2012, para. 2).

INGOs have no official status in China, and operate under ‘…an

informal understanding that as long as these organizations can

provide constructive and non-threatening services to China, no

matter their legal status, these groups are welcome to

participate in the environmental arena in China’ (para. 3).

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The analytical and advisory role of most environmental INGOS

can be contrasted with grassroots activism that seeks to

educate the public or to mobilize them for campaigns against

environmental abuse. Domestic environmental groups have played

activist roles in China since the early 1990s often mobilizing

public response to specific, local issues (Huo et al., 2012).

More recently, the national government has tolerated, even

encouraged the activities of environmental activists in order

to ‘build credibility and trust by coping in a more effective,

transparent and participatory way with environmental risks,’

(He, Mol & Lu, 2012, p. 7443) and to serve as a source of

information on local activities that might not otherwise be

transparent at the national level.

Not all Chinese environmentalists endorse a pragmatic approach

that attempts to walk a line between activism and

accommodation. In November 2012, a ‘group of young

environmentalists’ offered this critique:

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A strong inertia inherent in Chinese society

and the limitations of the political and economic

system have caused distortions in the growth and

behavior of China’s environmental NGOs. They do not

dare to target those in power, but target student

groups with no social influence. Some do not even

try to influence government decisions. In short,

they become co-opted by government’ (Yu et al.,

2012), ‘The environmental movement as a distorted

movement,’ para. 1).

In contrast, a different ‘group of young environmentalists,’

argued that activist groups ‘…generally rely on emotion,

intuition, knowledge and wisdom in deciding the correct course

of action,’ and need to reflect ‘in a comprehensive manner… to

clearly anticipate the future direction of the movement, what

exactly the mission is, or which path is more appropriate’ to

build a unified movement (Huo et al. 2012, ‘Activism in the

environmental movement,’ para. 5).

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Most INGOs operating in China thus emphasize an advisory role,

seeking to influence national environmental policy and

legislation. But Greenpeace East Asia2 has been an exception,

conducting ‘…education and awareness campaigns as well as

media-catching actions to highlight the dangers of global

warming’ (Futrell, 2008, p. 182). Ford explains that, although

Greenpeace is heavily involved in grassroots action it has

adopted the strategies employed by domestic ENGOs, framing its

campaigns, ‘…in line with the goals of the Chinese government

and the Chinese people rather than as a separate interest as

they often do in the West. They have adapted to the rules of

political participation in China rather than trying to change

them’ (2012, para. 9).

Over the last 20 years, environmental NGOs in China have

established an emergent presence as civil sector organizations

in the context of a single party state. International NGOs

have generally made the compromises necessary to be permitted

to work in service of the state consistent with their missions

and environmental objectives. Domestic NGOs have played a more

activist role, for example, challenging local governments to

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pursue or enforce environmental protection as a matter of

national policy.

c. India: A suspicion of NGOs with foreign interests.

NGOs have a long and continuous history in India, the

world’s largest democracy. Voluntary organizations flourished

in British India, while the role of modern Indian NGOs can be

traced from Gandhi’s mission of encouraging village self-

reliance to the establishment of the Association for Voluntary

Agencies for Rural Development [AVARD] in 1958 (Asian

Development Bank, 2009; Taneja, 2010). By 2009, there were

more than 3 million registered NGOs in India (Shukla, 2010).

In 2007, the Indian government promulgated a policy document

for relations with and expectations for NGOs, entitled National

Policy on the Voluntary Sector (Government of India, 2007). This

document affirms the importance of NGOs to meeting national

goals through stimulating community participation and in

offering alternative perspectives and expertise. It endorses

collaboration between NGOs and government at all levels to

address complex problems where sustained social mobilization

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is particularly important. It recognizes three areas for

collaboration: consultation, strategic collaboration, and

joint funding. It establishes the principles that NGOs should

be autonomous, transparent, and accountable for their

activities and transactions.

Relations between the government and the voluntary sector in

India, however, are not always viewed as collaborative.

According to Agarwal, NGOs offer the people of India some

leverage against what they perceive as governmental corruption

and injustices (2008, p. 934). On the other hand, Jakimow

reports a widespread perception of corruption within NGOs:

‘The core themes in people’s critique of NGOs are: they are

self-seeking; they do not do the work for which they receive

funds; and they siphon off money, which should be wholly

directed to “beneficiaries.”’ (2010, p. 558).

The Indian government is also suspicious of NGOs as vehicles

for foreign interests. For example, in October 2012, reporter

Chetan Chauhan described a strategy meeting among Indian NGOs,

including Greenpeace India and American and European donors to

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consider coal-based power generation in India. He reported

that, ‘Many in government admit that there has been a sudden

spurt in protest against big infrastructure projects across

India and suspect that they are being funded by international

NGOs’ (para. 12). As a consequence of such perceptions the

Indian government moved to revoke the permission of certain

Indian NGOs to accept foreign donations, blaming donors from

the U.S. for supporting anti-nuclear protests aimed at the

Koodankulam power plant (Lakshmi, 2013). Lakshmi quotes an

anonymous government official as saying, ‘…when an NGO uses

foreign donations to criticize Indian policies, “things get

complicated and you never know what the plot is….” NGOs should

use foreign donations to do development work instead’ (para.

6). She reports that that in the year ending March 2011, ‘…

about 22,000 NGOs received a total of more than $2 billion

from abroad, of which $650 million came from the United

States’ (para. 7).

Foreign influence on internal political issues has been a

continuing concern to the Indian government. The 1976 Foreign

Contribution Regulation Act established strict regulations

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regarding foreign-source funding of NGOs. The act required

organizations receiving foreign funds to register with the

government and to pass all funds through a single bank account

(Taneja, 2010). The act was updated in 2010, when the

government estimated that only 18,000 of 40,000 organizations

receiving foreign funding were reporting and accounting for

those funds. The extended act prohibits the use of foreign

funds for ‘activities detrimental to the national interest or

national security’ and requires banks to report the receipt of

funds greater than Rs. 10 lakh (about $17,000 in 2013)

(Balaji, 2010).

Reddy asserts that the updated act was specifically aimed at

controlling NGOs (Reddy, 2013). He interprets the

government’s use of the law in 2012 to revoke the FCRA license

of organizations protesting the Koodankulam nuclear power

plant as a clamp down on NGOs with dissenting viewpoints. He

charges the government with hypocrisy because foreign funds

play a significant role in supporting government-favored think

tanks on environmental policy. Reddy’s assessment echoes the

concerns of Samit Aich, Executive Director of Greenpeace

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India, expressed in an opinion article in 2012, ‘By raising

the spectre of the “foreign hand” supposedly behind protests

against nuclear energy and GM food…,’ he claimed, the Prime

Minister, has ignored, ‘…the real foreign hand: giant American

agrotech companies and the French, U.S. and Russian nuclear

industries’ (Aich, 2012a, para. 2). Harsh Jaitli, CEO of

Voluntary Action Network India, explains, that while the 1976

act left political activities undefined, the 2010 amendment

specifies that any organization which habitually engages in

political action through civil disobedience can be declared an

organization of a political nature and barred from receiving

foreign donations (Raza, 2013, para. 9).

As an activist NGO, engaged in campaigns to mobilize the

Indian public while operating as a branch of an international

organization, Greenpeace India must be sensitive to its

political context. As Kunal Majumder expressed it, ‘Since its

inception in 2001, Greenpeace India has been struggling to get

rid of the “foreigner” tag – it prefers the word

“international.” It doubled efforts to “Indianise” itself –

releasing press notes in Hindi, with a Hindi logo’ (2011,

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para. 2). Greenpeace India has indeed sought to present itself

as an India-centric organization. For example, when India’s

Minister for Rural Development referred to Greenpeace as ‘a

foreign funded NGO,’ Executive Director Samit Aich responded,

‘…we would like to correct your understanding on the funding

source for Greenpeace India. We are an independent campaigning

organization who is sustained by the funds given by India

citizens…. We are strongly rooted in India and we are an

Indian organization with international heritage’ (Aich, 2012b,

para. 4-5).

But while Greenpeace India’s individual fundraising is in fact

restricted to domestic donors, the organization nonetheless

receives about 40 per cent of its revenues (about $3.2 million

in 2011) from foreign sources in the form of grants, almost

entirely from Greenpeace International in Amsterdam

(Greenpeace India, 2012a,b). This compares to 2011 revenues of

about $8.3 million for Greenpeace East Asia, of which 37 per

cent comes from Greenpeace International and 10 per cent from

other Greenpeace National Offices (Greenpeace East Asia,

2012b).

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As Willetts (2002) observed, NGOs operate in symbiosis with

the state. As organizations that seek to mobilize citizens in

support of local issues that are manifestations of global

problems, the national branches of Greenpeace occupy a

perilous position with respect to national governments. In

India, the tension centers on the fear of foreign interests

influencing Indian citizens in ways contrary to the

government’s perceptions of national interests. In China, the

tension centers on the activist mission of mobilizing the

public to work together in a way that the national government

and the party do not perceive as a threat to their authority.

In India, the government works to circumscribe the actions of

INGOs through rule of law and the control of funding. In China

the government exercises its power by keeping INGOs extralegal

and thus vulnerable to expulsion. Given the similarity of

their release and themes, the Greenpeace reports on the coal-

water nexus provide a timely opportunity to gain insight to

the potential roles of NGOs in promoting effective

environmental governance in these two nations.

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4. Case study: Greenpeace Reports on Coal-Water Nexus in China and India

a. China: Thirsty coal and thirsty communities. In

August 2012, Greenpeace East Asia published a report, in the

form of a media briefing in English, with the title, Thirsty Coal:

A Water Crisis Exacerbated by China’s New Mega Coal Power Bases (2012a). The

report drew upon a larger, commissioned study, published

simultaneously in Chinese. This science-based report was

conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of

Geographical Science and Natural Resources’ Key Laboratory for

Land Water Cycles and Surface Processes in Beijing, and

entitled, Thirsty Coal: A Report on Coal-power Base Development and Water

Resources (Institute, 2012).

The primary message of Thirsty Coal is that the energy development

goals of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011 – 2015) are

unsustainable because coal power plants’ demands for scarce

water resources exceed the available supply in the arid lands

of northern China. In particular, the report warns that, ‘…

the fierce competition for water resources between industrial

and non-industrial sectors will very likely cause conflict in

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those areas,’ the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi,

Shanxi, and Ningxia (p. 3).

Copyright: Greenpeace. Reproduced with permission.

The primary audience for the report is the central government

of China. The report’s main recommendations are addressed to

the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the

Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP). The report advises

that NRDC should lead in modifying the nation’s coal power

plant development plan, based on a ‘strict and robust water

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demand assessment,’ and that MEP should stress the impacts of

coal power plants in its forthcoming Strategic Environmental

Impact Assessment on Western Regions Development.

The rhetoric of the report is interesting in several respects.

It explicitly raises the specter of ‘conflict and unrest’

between industry and rural communities, providing an internal

security motive to action as well as an environmental security

one (p. 3). This speaks to a core concern over governance in

China, which has experienced ‘persistent increases in popular

protest,’ beginning in the early 1990s (Tanner, 2006, p. 1).

Environmental degradation has been an important source of

local discontent, as newly privatized industries have often

been perceived to maximize profits without regard to local

environmental concerns.

According to Yang Zhaofei, vice-chair of the Chinese Society

for Environmental Sciences, the number of environmental

protests in China increased by 29 per cent annually between

1996 and 2010, and major incidents more than doubled in 2011,

including popular confrontations with the government and

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police (Liu, 2013, para. 5). According to Tanner, the national

government’s internal security strategy recognizes the

inevitability of such protests, but seeks to defuse any threat

to the state and the party by encouraging angry citizens to

blame local officials rather than the central government

(2006, pp. 2-4).

Accordingly, Thirsty Coal employs a rhetoric of wise national

government versus dilatory local authorities – a strategy that

allows Greenpeace to attack the status quo, without attacking

the national government or the Chinese Communist Party. The

concluding section of the report, for example, begins with a

quotation from the State Council declaring the seriousness of

water shortages in western China, and stating that, ‘While the

Central government has urged local authorities to focus on

protecting water resources…, we predict that the rapid

expansion of coal related industries in arid western China

during the 12th Five-Year-Plan will likely cause a series of

water crises and consequently many environmental problems’ (p.

7), thus implying that the problems are due to poor local

governance. The five-year plan, of course, is a national-level

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document, drafted under the auspices of the State Council and

NRDC (Seligsohn and Tan, 2011).

In Thirsty Coal, Greenpeace East Asia was pursuing a strategy to

enhance the likelihood of central government tolerance by

engaging the scientific expertise, and thus the imprimatur, of

the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This type of collaboration

has become a standard approach for the organization. In 2005,

for example, Greenpeace teamed with the CAS Cold and Arid

Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute to

produce a report on the impacts of climate change on the

sources of the Yellow River (Ding, Liu, Xie, Zhang, & Wang,

2005). More recently, Greenpeace commissioned the CAS Nanjing

Institute of Geography and Limnology to investigate water

quality in domestic lakes and reservoirs (Yin, 2013).

In short, Greenpeace East Asia pioneered a sustainable path

for an activist NGO in China. They addressed locally important

environmental issues and mobilized the public in ways that

both engaged central government agencies, such as CAS research

institutes, and informed central government policy makers,

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without casting blame for environmental threats on national-

level agencies. In a 2012 interview with reporter Geoff

Dembicki, Calvin Quek, head of Greenpeace East Asia’s

Sustainable Finance Program, concluded, ‘It’s hard to say

black and white whether [the government] is for us or against

us’ (Dembicki, para. 2). But Dembicki summarizes, ‘You might

say that Greenpeace East Asia’s broader vision of a

sustainable China is roughly comparable to that of the Chinese

leadership’ (para. 4).

Thirsty Coal was widely publicized by Greenpeace and widely

commented on in the national and international English

language press. Greenpeace East Asia held a follow up workshop

in Beijing on October 31, 2012, to discuss coal and

environmental security in arid regions of China (Rivers

without Boundaries, 2012). In an Impact Report on its ongoing

projects, issued in late 2012, Greenpeace East Asia published

a set of media questions raised by the report, using the

opportunity to reconcile its aims with those of the national

government:

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[Q] The coal expansion clearly goes against the

water resource regulation scheme. Is the government

just paying lip service with that scheme?

[A] The scheme, a document issued at the State

Council level is a great step forward in terms of

protecting China’s waters. It reflects there is no

lack of political will at central level. But there

is a lot of work to do to ensure policy makers at

different fronts are supporting the scheme. Some

departments will need to give in to the overarching

vision, and it takes time and effort (2012b, p. 9).

Although hard to come by, there is evidence that the

Chinese government values an advisory role for Greenpeace

East Asia. China’s chief climate negotiator and Deputy

NRDC Director Xie Zhenhua, during a 2010 meeting with

NGOs including Greenpeace, stated that NGOs were playing

a ‘“constructive role” in combating global warming’ and

that, ‘I welcome your suggestions and advices for the

government’ (Dong, 2010, para.1&6). Later that year, at

the Cancun climate change conference, Xie thanked

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representatives from NGOs, including Greenpeace, for

their efforts to promote global environmental protection

(‘Negotiator hails NGO efforts,’ 2010).

At the level of civil society, there are also indications that

Greenpeace reports have made some inroads into domestic

consciousness in China. An Internet search conducted in March

2014, revealed 17,800 results when using the Chinese-language

version of the report title Thirsty Coal (Shishui zhimei). While

significant, this number may not be as large as it first

appears given the number of Internet users in China, estimated

in 2013, by the Pew Research Center at nearly 591 million.

This number is further inflated by the high level of

duplication of Chinese press and blog reports. Additionally,

Chinese versions of foreign websites, such as the British

Broadcasting Company, Deutsche Welle, and The New York Times, tellingly

dominate these numbers, obscuring the actual level of

domestic-based coverage of the Thirsty Coal report. Nonetheless,

reputable and occasionally official Chinese online periodicals

like Caixin and Xinhua, as well as papers from such top-ranked

universities as Peking University are present among the

32


Chinese language sources that refer to Thirsty Coal. Overall,

environmental issues have transitioned from local level

coverage and protest to wider national attention and coverage

within China, particularly in the face of increasingly

apparent signs of environmental degradation in power centers

like Beijing and Shanghai.

Greenpeace Asia, perhaps emboldened by the success of Thirsty

Coal, later overstepped the bounds of government tolerance for

its activist approach. In July 2013, Greenpeace published a

follow-on report entitled in English, Thirsty Coal 2: Shenhua’s Water

Grab (Greenpeace East Asia, 2013a). According to Shenhua Group’s web

site, ‘It is a backbone-state-owned enterprise directly under

the central government ... and the largest coal distributer of

the world’ (Shenhua, n.d. [2014]). In Thirsty Coal 2, described on

the cover as, ‘An investigation into the over-extraction of

groundwater and illegal discharge of wastewater by Shenhua

Group’s Coal-to-Liquid Demonstration Project in Ordos, Inner

Mongolia,’ Greenpeace East Asia departs from a critique of

energy policy and its general impacts on water to a direct

attack on a specific project by a specific, state-owned firm.

33


The report concludes that Shenhua Group’s project, by lowering

the water table, ‘…has destroyed the foundations of the local

community and threatens the residents’ survival. These actions

have violated several laws including the Grasslands Law and

the Law on Prevention and Control of Desertification.’ Shenhua

Group’s discharge of toxic wastewater ‘…also violates the

Water Law and Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law of

the People’s Republic of China’ (p. 66). The report calls upon

Shenhua Group to immediately stop such damage. It calls on the

NRDC and the national ministries of Industry and Information

Technology, Water Resources, and Environmental Protection to

‘…develop clear, scientific and applicable regulations that

truly adhere to the principle of limiting coal expansion based

on water capacity,’ asking them to review and re-evaluate

approved projects and to reject projects that do not protect

water and the environment (pp. 67-8).

Thirsty Coal 2 attempts to employ the rhetorical stance of ‘bad’

local violations of ‘good’ national policies, but this stance

is hard to maintain when the target is a state-owned

34


corporation. The report’s conclusion sets up the theme of

local damage in the face of good national policies, stating,

As a “demonstration project” the reprehensible and

criminal actions of Shenhua at its Ordos Coal-to-

Liquid Project must be seen as yet another warning

to national energy and environmental agencies….

Meanwhile, the blind race by local governments to

bring in coal-chemical projects suggests that from

initial environmental impact assessment to

supervision, local governments acquiesce to the

demands of investors. The consequence has been

massive environmental damage and irreparable harm to

the stable social conditions of residents (p. 66).

Overall, this rhetoric is undercut by the fact that the sole

investor in Shenhua Group is the national government of the

Peoples Republic of China.

Following publication of the report, the Chinese government

imposed a media blackout on Greenpeace East Asia’s press

35


release of Thirsty Coal 2, removing posts about the report from

Weibo, blocking a video about the project from Youku, and

ordering that internet searches related to Greenpeace and

Shenhua be blocked. Interestingly, however, access to the

English and Chinese language versions of the report on the

Greenpeace website was not blocked (Henochowicz 2013;

Greenpeace East Asia, 2013b). Shenhua Group also responded to

Greenpeace with an invitation to talk and with official

statements admitting to problems in water consumption by the

project, confirming waste water incidents, and promising to

undertake an impact assessment to find a viable way ahead

(Berger, 2013; Greenpeace East Asia, 2013c; Queck 2013).

In September 2013, Shenhua Group announced that it would

reduce the water intensity of its coal-to-liquid plant by 40

per cent (Queck, 2013), an action which reporter Debra Tan

attributed as a response to the Greenpeace report (Yonts &

Tan, 2014). Thirsty Coal 2 seems also to have had an impact on

other Chinese NGOs. Concurrent with the release of the report,

local ENGOs, Friends of Nature and Nature University filed a

public interest lawsuit against the Shenhua project (Queck,

36


2013). At least one commentator saw the report as a potential

stimulus to legal action by the All-China Environmental

Federation (ACEF), a government-backed NGO, to take legal

action against Shenhua Group in an effort to regain public

trust (Lin, 2013).

The Greenpeace reports may have influenced national policy as

well. In December 2013, the Chinese Ministry of Water

Resources (MWR) announced a new Water Allocation Plan for the

Development of Coal Bases, setting limits for water use by coal

mines and power plants based on regional water availability,

thus adopting policies consistent with the recommendations of

Thirsty Coal. Debra Tan, discussing the new policy document, noted

that, ‘…the water-energy nexus has been a hot topic this year

in the capital partly due to the smog,’ She goes on to note

that, ‘Shenhua has set water targets on coal-chem projects,

albeit in reaction to Greenpeace,’ i.e., Thirsty Coal 2 (Yonts and

Tan, 2014, ‘How do you think the contradiction… will be

resolved?’ last para.). Without inside knowledge of the

ministry’s policy process, precision and certainty are not

possible. But it does appear that the Greenpeace reports are

37


known to Chinese policy makers. The MWR policy document also

provides evidence for Dembicki’s claim that ‘Greenpeace East

Asia’s broader vision of a sustainable China is roughly

comparable to that of the Chinese leadership’ (2012, para. 4).

When it comes to civil society, the level of penetration of

Thirsty Coal 2 appears again to be relatively high. A search of

available online Chinese-language references in March 2014,

revealed a slight increase over references to Thirsty Coal with

19,200 results. In part, this may be explained by the overlap

of references and residual interest generated by the original

report. Overall, however, it indicates a similar level of

penetration of the two reports. As with the original report,

Thirsty Coal 2 receives most of its coverage in Chinese-language

versions of foreign outlets that in some cases are blocked or

curtailed within China.

Beyond simple overviews of Thirsty Coal 2, some Chinese online

periodicals, like Daily Economic Journal [Meiri jingji xinwen], offer

accounts of the dispute and legal proceedings pertaining to

Shenhua Group. Even more tellingly, while China often bans or

38


polices its domestic blogs, they provide the bulk of Chinese

online results for Thirsty Coal 2. Furthermore, they reveal a

domestic debate over the findings of the Thirsty Coal 2 report.

For example, several discuss the lobbying of a dozen Chinese

representatives from Ordos at relevant state ministries and

municipal government offices to compel Shenhua Group to stop

extracting local groundwater. These articles and the actions

of the individuals involved provide a small window into the

extent to which civil society in China is working at the

grassroots level.

b. India: Endangered waters, but who is listening?

In August 2012, Greenpeace India Society published its

report, Endangered Waters: Impacts of Coal-fired Power Plants on Water Supply

(2012c). The report draws upon a study of the Wardha and

Waingunga River watersheds, commissioned by Greenpeace and

conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) (Gosain,

Khosa & Anand, 2012).The primary message of Endangered Waters is

that India faces a crisis, as national demand for water is on

a course to exceed supply within 30-40 years. Integrated water

resource management is needed to manage the crisis. In

39


particular, the unmanaged expansion of coal-fired power plants

will compete with agricultural needs for irrigation,

imperiling the livelihoods of farmers and their ability to

feed the nation (pp. 65-6).

Greenpeace India chose the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra

state as a case study for several reasons. This region

highlights India’s current state of water-stress. It

illustrates the ways that a rising population can make the

calculus of balancing energy and water more complicated.

Moreover, Vidarbha had already experienced conflict between

water needed for irrigation and water needed for energy. The

Greenpeace India report posits that failure to mitigate this

challenge will have far-reaching consequences for national,

provincial, and local government. Further, it threatens

negative consequences for the business community, as well as

India’s food, water, and energy security. Perhaps another

factor in the selection was the high visibility of Vidarbha

due to an epidemic of farmer suicides. While overwhelming debt

is the common theme underlying the suicides, the underlying

causes of indebtedness include crop losses due to drought and

40


flood, changing farming technologies and a lack of

agricultural infrastructure for irrigation (See, for example,

Borreomeo, 2012; Dongre & Deshmukh, 2012; and Endangered Waters,

pp. 33-35).

Image: Vivek Muthuramalingam/Greenpeace. Reprodiced with

permission.

In contrast to Thirsty Coal, Endangered Waters targets decision

makers in several sectors. These include members of national,

state and local governments, the scientific community, the

international development community, and the public-at-large.

41


The report identifies the potential economic and environmental

dangers of unmanaged, over-reliance on coal-based power

generation by central, regional, and provincial governments.

It also discusses the dangers to businesses faced by water

shortages adversely impacting the profitability of coal-based

power plants. The report draws upon the technical information

provided by IIT to inform the international investment

community of the risks of India’s growing dependence on coal-

based energy. Unlike Thirsty Coal, however, Endangered Waters does not

address the water demands of coal mining or transportation.

The coal mining regions of India lie to the east of

Maharashtra state, and most supplies are imported (p. 12).

Reflecting India’s governance as a federal republic, Endangered

Waters addresses government officials at multiple levels. The

report criticizes government planning at the national level,

stating, ‘If India continues to add thermal power capacity at

such a galloping pace – as is envisioned in the 12th Five Year

Plan – water conflicts between agriculture and coal-fired

thermal power become inevitable’ (p. 5). It specifically

recommends that, ‘The Union Ministry of Water Resources must

42


conduct basin-level, cumulative water risk assessments to

assess the feasibility of coal power plants without affecting

the existing water requirements of the region,’ observing that

the Ministries of Power and of Environment and Forests should

be collaborators in this work (p. 66).

At the state level, the report criticizes the Maharashtra

government for deviating from the National Water Policy by

prioritizing water for industrial uses over irrigation (p.

35). The report also assigns a measure of culpability to local

government, citing Vidarbha’s increasing backlog of water

irrigation project applications as evidence that local

government has sidelined an increasing number of irrigation

proposals, ostensibly in favor of increased water supply to

power plants (p. 30). It calls upon the Government of

Maharashtra to conduct water availability assessments and to

suspend diversions of irrigation water to industry until they

are completed (p. 66).

Unlike Thirsty Coal, Endangered Waters makes a direct appeal to the

business sector. The rapid expansion of thermal power in

43


India, it claims, ‘…is due in part to increasing activity

within the private sector,’ subsequent to changes in national

policy after 1991, that provided incentives to domestic and

international investors. New state government incentives also

streamlined environmental clearances for power projects (pp.

12-13). The report warns businesses and investors that issues

of water availability and cost should act as a disincentive to

corporate investments in thermal power plants, as should the

political and reputational risks of association with thermal

power plants in times of drought (pp. 55-7).

The rhetoric of Endangered Waters is one of resource management.

Its recommendations call for better planning at the national

and state level, more rational development and allocation of

water resources that protect the interests of farmers and

villages, and for better risk management by the private sector

in the face of runaway development enabled by ineffective

governance. Despite these calls to action, the level to which

Endangered Waters has had an impact on Indian national, much less

industrial, policies, has been limited at best.

44


As in the Chinese case, there is difficulty in assessing the

level to which the Greenpeace report Endangered Waters has

penetrated Indian civil society. Nonetheless, there are signs

that the report has been received with much less interest than

in China. An online review conducted in March 2014, of the

English title of the report uncovered only 586 results, with

the Hindu and Urdu versions of the title yielding no results.

When compared with its Chinese counterpart, the Greenpeace

report targeting India has developed a much less pronounced

impact at both the government and civil society levels. These

numbers suggesting a relative lack of impact for Endangered

Waters could in part be explained by the dynamism, plurality,

and volume of reportage within India. While a few reputable

Indian think tanks, such as the Centre for Science and

Environment, and periodicals like The Hindu and Tehelka, are among

those reporting on Endangered Waters, such influential coverage

is rare. Even blogs, which tend toward ubiquity on any range

of issues in India, are relatively silent on this report.

Overall, little or no evidence is available to suggest that

Endangered Waters has had a direct impact on water policy or on

45


energy sector investment in India. To the contrary, an article

in the sustainable business section of The Guardian, in October

2013, reports that a consortium of U.S. and European banks

have engaged in managing a share offering for Coal India in

spite of several ‘well-sourced’ Greenpeace reports and over

the objections of national and international ENGOs (Gunther,

2013, para. 12).

Greenpeace India also issued a follow-on report in May 2013,

entitled Coal Power Plants and Water Use in Maharashtra: Conflicts over Water

Diversion during the Drought, This report referenced the IIT study

that informed Endangered Waters. It continued the theme of the

need for more integrated water management to mediate conflicts

between water for irrigation and water for energy. The

follow-on report, however, was more focused, directed at the

immediate impacts of drought on regions in Maharashtra to the

west of Vidarbha. Its critique and recommendations

specifically targeted the Maharashtra state government, which

was urged to immediately halt water diversions to power plants

in the drought affected region, to undertake a water impact

and availability assessment throughout the state, and to

46


actively promote an energy policy centered on renewable energy

technologies to conserve water (p. 9).

In spite of its targeted recommendations, this report has also

had difficulty making a dent into Indian civil society. It

does present an increase from Endangered Waters in the overall

level of discussion, with a search in March 2014, yielding 860

results in English, 82 in Hindi, and 62 in Urdu. However, when

these citations are probed more carefully, it turns out that

bulk are simply redundancies of the same report on thermal

power plants in India. Not only does this reduce the overall

count of English language search results to 24, it also

suggests a low level of penetration of the report Conflicts over

Water Diversion into Indian discourse

and debate.

5. Comparison. A comparison of the Greenpeace reports reveals

that, although they are similar in subject matter and in

format, they are targeted at different audiences. The Indian

report, Endangered Waters, addresses multiple decision makers in

national, state and local government, as well as business

47


firms and their investors. Thirsty Coal addresses a narrower

audience, primarily Chinese national government agencies. It

is reasonable to interpret these rhetorical differences as

reflections of significant differences in the political

context of governance and in the distribution of power in the

two nations.

The reports necessarily differ in their geographic focus.

Endangered Waters takes as its case the Vidarbha region of

Maharashtra state. The report warns of a future water crisis

as demand exceeds supply over a 30-40 year period, and it

recommends to its several audiences integrated water resource

management to address the emerging crisis. Thirsty Coal looks at a

larger area, China’s four northern, dryland provinces, and it

warns of a near-term collision between energy and agricultural

demands for a limited water resource, institutionalized in the

current five-year plan, predicting that, ‘in 2015, the water

demand of coal power bases in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi

and Ningxia will either severely challenge or exceed the

respective areas’ total industrial water supply capacity’ (p.

1).

48


Both documents generated follow-on reports. In Thirsty Coal 2,

Greenpeace East Asia drills down on its topic, moving beyond a

broad critique of provincial governments and a call for a

national policy review, to a direct attack on a single

enterprise, the coal to liquid demonstration plant operated by

the state-owned coal giant, Shenhua Group. Greenpeace India,

in contrast, shifts its focus from eastern Maharashtra to the

western part of the state, where a major drought was having

immediate impacts on water resources. Their report called upon

the state government to implement on a timely basis the

integrated water management approach that Endangered Waters had

recommended for the Vidarbha region.

Available evidence indicates that the Chinese reports have had

a greater impact on civil society and governance than the

Indian reports. The rate of discussion on the internet in

China has been nearly 20 times greater than in India. At least

one national government official, Xie Zhenhua, has engaged

Greenpeace and its coal campaign. Shenhua Group also responded

to Thirsty Coal 2, accepting its conclusions in part, and

49


promising an internal investigation. Although without

attribution to the Greenpeace report, in December 2013, the

Chinese Ministry of Water Resources’ (MWR) Water Allocation Plan for

the Development of Coal Bases, incorporated many of the

recommendations of Thirsty Coal, most importantly tying power

plant development to local water resources (‘MWR Announces

Water-for-Coal-Plan’, 2013).

6. Discussion. Bernhardt and Vanderheiden observed that

the role of non-state actors in global environmental politics

can be described as ‘governance without government.’ NGOs and

other non-state actors, they say, ‘play a vital role in

developing and exercising authority over resource and

pollution policy domains and in efforts to coordinate

proactive and reactive responses to global environmental

challenges like climate change’ (2012, p. 1). As Lipschutz has

argued, however, global challenges are the total of local

environmental issues, and, ‘It is from these localized

political economies that we must build a framework for

addressing problems in what we call the “global environment”’

(1998, p. 101).

50


Greenpeace is an international NGO, operating across national

domains through independent, but coordinated national and

regional offices. The findings of Endangered Waters and Thirsty

Coal, together with those of the South Africa report, Water

Hungry Coal, were jointly briefed by Greenpeace International at

the UNFCCC Doha Conference in November 2012, with the message

‘The success of COP 18 in Doha is crucial for sending the

right signals to deter further coal expansion’ (Greenpeace

International, 2012, 8th key point). The individual reports

dealt with specific local issues at the coal-water nexus.

Their specific findings and recommendations were directed at

national and provincial governments and at corporations

operating locally. But they were also aggregated and used by

Greenpeace International to build a framework for its campaign

at the global level, and in this way served as local elements

in a chain of environmental security governance.

Drawing upon the literature, Bernhardt and Vanderheiden

abstract several related characteristics of NGOs contributing

to governance at the global level. NGOs exhibit agency - the

51


power to impact the course of events (p.1). NGOs have emerged

as agents of governance as a direct response to the complexity

of environmental problems, and their emergence can often be

explained as filling a void created by state inaction or

obstruction (p. 4). NGOs can provide transparency and

accountability, both as surrogates for defective state

institutions and as good partners and reliable sources of

information and expertise (pp. 7-8). By providing compelling

narratives that question power holders and demand answers,

NGOs can uniquely hold governments accountable for their

environmental policies and their implementation (p. 9).

All of these characteristics are manifest in Endangered Waters

and Thirsty Coal and their follow-on reports, as pertain to

operations at the national level. These documents assume

agency – their very purpose is to change the course of events.

They address complex issues across the lines of multiple

government ministries and those of national and provincial

governments, and they seek to influence corporate practices.

Both Thirsty Coal and Endangered Waters move from the science and

technology of energy production to the environmental and

52


social impacts of its demands for water. In this way, they

embrace the complexity of problems at the coal-water nexus and

work to fill a void that they attribute to state inaction or

inattention. Both reports seek to maintain credibility through

their co-option of respected research institutes. The

documents themselves, through text, photos, charts and

rhetorical stance seek to construct compelling narratives

demanding answers from power holders. In short, these two

cases of locally situated campaigns conform well to the

framework of environmental security governance that explains

the emerging roles of NGOs in global environmental governance.

However, they are not consistent with the aphorism of global

environmental politics as governance without government.

Hanggi’s recognition that, ‘At the state and sub-state level,

governance is mostly exercised by governments’ (p.6)’ applies

to these cases. In both China and India, Greenpeace and other

NGOs exercise no authority, but in both nations, with varying

degrees of success, the Greenpeace reports are trying to

influence government and other powerful stakeholders. By

establishing and promoting certain norms embodied in their

53


recommendations (or demands), Greenpeace India and Greenpeace

East Asia participate in environmental governance. And by

advocating for local communities of farmers and promoting

their interests at the expense of vested industrial interests

they promote transparency and democracy in environmental

governance. But in the end, when addressing local issues

within a framework of national sovereignty, these cases

provide evidence that NGOs are part of environmental

governance within government, rather than without it.

Ironically, as observed through the narrow window of these two

initiatives, Greenpeace East Asia appears to have been more

successful in influencing governance within a one-party state

than has Greenpeace India within a robust democracy with a

long and continuous history of NGOs. This difference may be

representative of the different constraints of governance

under different political systems. Where Greenpeace India is

one voice among three million registered NGOs, Greenpeace East

Asia is one of three thousand NGOs, and fewer than 50 INGOs,

operating in China. Those INGOs are under strict state control

comprising little threat to the state, as demonstrated by

54


government censorship of information in the case of Thirsty Coal

2.

So, in addition to its advocacy role, Greenpeace East Asia

appears to have had some success in an advisory role, gaining

an ear at Shenhua Group and at the NRDC, and possibly

influencing policy at the Ministry of Water Resources. As

Futrell (2008) and Ford (2012) described, and as government

censorship of Thirsty Coal 2 illustrates, Greenpeace East Asia’s

effectiveness as an advisor depends on moderation in its

methods of advocacy. Perhaps because a more robust advocacy

role is possible there, advisory and advocacy roles appear to

be less compatible in India. The contrast may be taken as a

further example of Willet’s observation that NGOs operate in

symbiosis with the state.

Read in tandem, Thirsty Coal and Endangered Waters reveal a marked

difference in how China has both engaged and co-opted

Greenpeace as compared with India. The relatively limited

exposure that Endangered Waters and its follow on report have

received in India demonstrates the constraints faced by

55


Greenpeace India in getting its message heard, much less

implemented. At the global level, this divergence could

reflect the lesser degree of public attention that India’s

pollution issues have received in comparison with China

(Harris, 2014). At the national level, the gap in reception of

these two Greenpeace reports likely demonstrates the

difficulty of penetrating the cacophony and plurality of media

and public discourse within India. The greater level of both

civil society and government response to the Greenpeace

reports in China suggests that it has been able to absorb and

digest these recommendations to a much greater extent than

India.

This review of Greenpeace campaigns in India and China

suggests that, at the national level, the impact of NGOs on

environmental governance depends deeply on an organization’s

relation to government. Ironically, perhaps, in China,

Greenpeace East Asia is highly visible to government, and it

serves the government’s interest by providing an external

source of information on activities and perceptions at the

provincial and local level. An NGO such as Greenpeace East

56


Asia is perceived as valuable and is tolerated as long as it

acts in accordance with the unwritten rules of engagement with

the government, as practiced by domestic ENGOs and INGOs

serving in an advisory capacity. Greenpeace India, by

comparison, is one among many ENGOs, tolerated as a matter of

democratic principle, but suspect because of its international

origins and connections. In this democratic context, its

advocacy role may ipso facto present a barrier to acceptance as a

trusted advisor to government. In neither case do the

organization’s activities at the national level amount to

governance without government. Within the boisterous Indian

political context, Greenpeace India has yet to have a

meaningful impact on governance at the coal-water nexus.

Greenpeace East Asia, on the other hand, appears to have found

a role that can impact environmental governance, but one that

is dependent upon operating within bounds that are set by the

Chinese model of government.

57


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1 Greenpeace Africa released a parallel report, “Water Hungry Coal: Burning South Africa’s water to produce electricity,” in October. We have chosen to concentrate this study on the two Asia-Pacific nations.2 Although Greenpeace China is sometimes used to refer to the organization’s officeand activities in China, there is no formal entity by that name.

Environmental Security and Governance at the Water-Energy Nexus: Greenpeace in India and China

Documents