9 June, 2014, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released the results of their 2013-2014 annual assessment of the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) of 120 key environmental cities in China.

The results (in order):

Top 10: Ningbo, Beijing, Qingdao, Zhenjiang, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Changzhou, Yangzhou

Bottom 10: Kunming, Linfen, Harbin, Jinzhou, Deyang, Shaoguan, Jilin, Yuxi, Yangquan, Datong

Key findings:

• Environmental protection supervision and information management in those 120 cities still need improvement
• Breakthroughs have been achieved in the disclosure of real-time pollution date and of full environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports.
• Four main areas of improvement:
  • Shandong, Zhejiang and several other provinces’ online monitoring platforms are already capable of hourly publication;
  • Ningbo, Beijing and other key cities’ daily monitoring information disclosure has become regular;
  • 42 cities (including Beijing, Tianjin and Yancheng) have begun to implement disclosure of full EIA reports; and
  • Shandong, Hunan and other local environmental protection bureaus have begun using Weibo and other similar tools to interact with the public.
• Several deficiencies in environmental information disclosure were found:
  • Public participation in EIAs is difficult to implement,
  • Disclosure of industrial emissions data is very limited.

The full report is available here.