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The ideas of approximately 700 Chinese high school students (aged 11 to 16) from the city of Shanghai and Zhejiang Province have been investigated using a closed questionnaire to find out the extent to which they believed that various actions might help reduce global warming. The results show that students appear to have some understanding of the issue, with certain correct ideas increasing with age, and various incorrect ideas decreasing. Amongst the most popular ideas, however, were a number of misconceptions, some of which, alarmingly, increased in popularity with age. In the affective domain, a high proportion of students felt that responsibility for taking action against global warming should be shared between government, industries and the individual, with a high degree of willingness for more education and legislation to help overcome the problem. There was less support for taxation, individual or corporate, to help alleviate the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese environmental groups have become increasingly active in the past few years and have begun to make an impact on environmental governance. The paper analyses the recent development of Chinese environmental civil society, the way it operates, and the challenges ahead, which include the need for environmental NGOs to improve their technical capacity, to strengthen further the collaboration between different organizations, and to strike a balance between maintaining domestic support and meeting international concerns. The biggest challenge ahead for environmental civil society is to develop the necessary skills to tackle the broader political, economic, and social issues that underlie environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]