This project, commissioned by Office of Sustainable Development, the Environmental Protection Administration(EPA), focused on international environmental information collection and trend analysis. The main tasks of this project consisted of the following: (1) to collect, select, and translate environmental news and policies and provide them periodically to EPA to aid its policy implementation; (2) to analyze trends in international environmental protection, environmental regulations and policies and provide the analysis to EPA to aid its policy formation. The project duration is 9.5 months. Regarding the first task, through December 28 2011, more than 1023 international environmental news articles were selected and collected. The highlights of the news were translated and distributed to the subscribers. 42 issues of international environmental weekly news were edited and published. A total of 64 countries or regional political entities are covered by the news. The majority of the news collected by this project (47%) originated from the US and United Nations. As to news classification, news about air quality protection and noise control takes up the highest percentage (28%) since news about climate change and greenhouse gas control are currently classified under this category. News about water quality protection takes the second highest percentage (12%). Other categories such as environmental hygiene and toxic management, integrated environmental policy and waste management each takes up 9%~10%. The rest are about energy policy, sustainable industries and technologies, ecology protection, soil and groundwater remediation, green consumption…etc. The major fields that are relevant to EPA works are more or less evenly covered. Regarding the second task, 3 issues of quarterly analytical reports on international environmental protection trends were published. 6 special topic reports, with the topics selected and assigned by the EPA, were completed and provided. In this final report, a yearly news trend analysis was also performed for the entire duration of this project. All tasks required by this project have been successfully accomplished.

International environmental news, environmental information, Trends in international environmental policy