With a network of volunteers, FON could play an important role educating the public on environmental issues, Li said. Meanwhile, it is also making strategic plans and trying to improve its credibility and professional abilities.

Global Village of Beijing's Liao said she has always been an idealist and has been enthusiastically working for many years. After reflecting on China's environmental NGO development, she realized that it was difficult for such an organization to achieve much progress if all it had to work with was enthusiasm. She believed that NGOs should absorb wisdom from Chinese culture and advocate for Chinese-style environmental protection.

"China's environmental protection should fit in with China's actual conditions," said Liao.

In order to realize such a concept, Global Village of Beijing and the Ecological Association in Dapingshan Village, which is located in the Sichuan earthquake area, jointly promote a project to help villagers rebuild their homes using environmental concepts like saving land, materials, energy and money, while at the same time consoling their spirits.

Multi-cooperation

Mei said that Green Kunming could not achieve success on its winning conservation project without the cooperation of environmental experts, the media, government and local villagers.

Green Kunming received a message from a farmer in August 2008 that said a company was planning to build a large car wash on the west hill of Dianchi Lake. Such a project would cut off an underground river without the permission of local authorities. The message said that the company was ready to use the river water to wash cars.

Once getting the message, Green Kunming led its citizen volunteers to investigate. After visiting the government agencies in charge, Green Kunming drafted a report and presented it to the Kunming Municipal People's Congress. The group waited for a long while and received no reply. The group made another investigation and included citizen letters in its report. Trying to attract the attention of Kunming City leaders, the group also invited the media to report on the issue. After two years of effort, Qiu He, Secretary of the Kunming Municipal Party Committee, finally denied the car wash the right to build.

Mei said that an important reason for the success was that the group had a clear understanding of the role that Green Kunming needed to play in the case. "We always considered ourselves as the third party. With that orientation, we took an impartial position in the investigation," said Mei.

"Another reason is that we were trying hard to learn and use practical skills in communicating with governments," Mei said. "One such skill was that we invited some deputies to the local people's congress to help us reach authorities."

Green Kunming also invited many government officials to attend the organization's meetings, allowing them to gradually understand the group's work. "When dealing with cases concerning environmental pollution, government officials would support our work," Mei said.

Huo Daishan is the director of Huaihe River Ecology Research Institute, or Huaihe River Defenders. Under his leadership, the Huaihe River Defenders have achieved success in dealing with pollution coming from Henan Lianhua Monosodium Glutamate Co. Ltd. The company was one of the biggest polluters of the Huaihe River. After nearly 10 years of confrontation, the Huaihe River Defenders had achieved little progress. But in early 2005, the two parties stopped being hostile and began cooperating with each other. Today, the Huaihe River has gotten healthier and the company is also developing. Together, they realized a win-win situation.

"Today, the government has changed its attitude to environmental NGOs. It does not regard them as potential enemies and the NGOs no longer regard the government as an obstacle. They both began assigning more importance to cooperating with each other," said Hong Dayong.

At the end of 2008, SEE set up a department to fund China's environmental NGOs and to boost cooperation between them. Yang Peng said that the plan includes money and educational support.

Besides the 30 prizes given out at the third SEE-TNC Ecological Awards, the group also established 20 Green Leadership Training scholarships, Yang said.

The training is designed to help China's environmental NGOs develop. The courses, created by SEE, Indiana University in the United States, Peking University and Sun Yat-Sen University, give special training to key members of the NGOs.

"Cooperation between NGOs and different social circles is growing stronger. In the future, if an NGO wants to develop the capacity to work on public welfare, they will be able to easily find support, including funding, personnel and managing technologies, from social circles, especially local circles," said Wang Shi.