This project, commissioned by Office of Sustainable Development, the Environmental Protection Administation (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 the EPA to aid its policy implementation; (2) to analyze trends in international environmental protection, environmental regulations and policies and provide the analysis to the EPA to aid its policy formation. The project duration was 8.5 months. Regarding the first task until to December 31, there are 549 international environmental news articles were selected and collected. The highlights of the news were translated and distributed to the subscribers. 32 issues of international environmental weekly news were edited and published. A total of 40 coutries or regional political entities are covered by the news. The majority of the news collected by this project (31%) originated from the US and EU. As to news classification, news about waste managemen takes up the highest percentage (18.2%). News about climate change, energy saving and carbon reduction takes the second highest percentage (17.7%). Other categories such as environmental hygiene and air quality protection takes 16% and 14.9%, water resource protection takes 12.9%, toxic management takes 12%, and soil groundwater pollution takes up 8%. The major fields that are relevant to the 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. 5 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. As of the present, all tasks required by this project were accomplished on schedule.

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