Ma Jun, China's Green Warrior

As one of China's first environmental reporters, Ma Jun spent years researching and writing about the environmental issues in his country. Eventually, however, he realized that just exposing the problems wasn't enough. “You can't stop there,” he says. “People are looking for answers.”

Hence, in 2006, Ma founded the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a non-profit organization that has since become China's leading green guardian. Ma, along with his nine full-time employees and a national community of volunteers, have created an online pollution database consisting of 97,000 records of factories that are violating Chinese environmental laws.

“The real barrier is not lack of technology or money,” says Ma about China's monolithic ecological problems. “It's lack of motivation. The motivation should come from regulatory enforcement, but enforcement is weak and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there's an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation.”

Compiled to increase transparency and accountability in the manufacturing industry, the IPE database lets ordinary citizens take a look at facts that would have otherwise been hidden from public view.

“What we've found is when people access this information, companies feel the public pressure,” Ma says. “We provide them opportunities to explain what went wrong and how they can fix their problems.” IPE has also started a third-party audit protocol that allows violating companies to undergo an independent audit to get their records removed from the organization's list.

Walmart was the first multinational to screen its facilities using IPE's database in 2008, prompting others to follow suit. To date, over 500 companies have signed on with IPE, including Nike, Unilever, Sony, H&M, and Coca Cola.

Last month, Ma received the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work, though it is far from done. He and his team plan to reach out to more people by making some user-friendly applications for the database. “I hope they can see that as a consumer, if they express themselves, they may make an impact and leverage their impact on the brands, and the brands can leverage their buying power on tens of thousands of polluters – and suppliers – in China.”