China's newly amended Environmental Protection Law was a major game-changer and a huge win for the future of China's environmental and public health. The most important provisions included empowering authorities to penalize polluters more heavily, weighing environmental protection records in performance appraisals of officials, requiring violators to disclose pollution data, and allowing NGOs to pursue public interest litigation. 

In anticipation of the new law taking effect next January, we held a roundtable in Anhui Province that gathered our Environmental Law Project's legal fellows, lawyers, NGO representatives and academics to discuss the law, focusing especially on how civil-society organizations will initiate environmental public interest lawsuits. We will continue to work with partners and advocate for legal approaches to clean up China's environment for years to come.