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On 11 March, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China jointly issued the document “Opinions on Speeding up Establishing Legal and Policy System for Green Production and Consumption”, which aims to improve current laws and regulations, and facilitate green production and consumption nationally.
The document raises the following main goal: By the year of 2025, regulations, standards and policies related to green production and consumption should be further improved and strengthened, and a system with effective encouraging and constraining rules should be basically completed. Green production and consumption will be implemented on a national scale in key areas, industries and processes, to fulfill China’s overall improvement of green development.
To achieve the 2025 goal, the document highlighted 27 key tasks to be carried out in 9 areas, including promoting green design, strengthening industrial clean production, developing industrial circular economy, reinforcing industrial pollution control, facilitating energy clean development and other areas. Tasks were clearly assigned to different ministries and authorities to implement, including NDRC, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). MEE will be responsible for completing and improving the priority control chemical inventory, introducing policies and measures to further promote mandatory clean production auditing in key industries, speeding up the development of feasible technical guidelines for pollution prevention and control, and other related tasks.
According to the requests laid out in the document, ministries and authorities should perform their duties to facilitate formulating and revising laws and regulations, standards, policies related to green production and consumption, which should also be adapted and implemented at local level. Fiscal, tax and revenue, and financial departments at all levels should accordingly improve relevant supporting policies in long term. Publicity and communication on green production and consumption needs to be implemented by communication departments at different levels.
Amid the concerns on how “green” China can remain under the enormous economic pressure caused by the current COVID19 pandemic, on 3 March 2020, the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council jointly released a “Guideline on Building a Modern Environmental Governance System” (hereafter referred to as the “Guideline”). Although it is not a direct response to the current concerns, but rather part of China’s long-term strategy of establishing an “Ecological Civilization”, this national policy issued by the top leadership from both the Party and government nevertheless reassured the world that China remains committed to its sustainable development and environmental protection agendas.
With the Guideline’s target of putting in place a sound environmental governance system by 2025, the top policymakers put ever greater emphasis on fundamentally transforming China’s environmental governance system at all levels. To this end, the Guideline specifies responsibilities of governments agencies, corporate entities, civil society and the public, and emphasizes joint efforts of all actors. Future efforts will be concentrated towards seven specific governance systems: (1) adjust the responsibility system for government officials at all levels, (2) consolidate the responsibility system for corporate entities, (3) motivate broader public support, (4) enhance environmental monitoring and supervision, (5) stimulate the environmental industry, (6) set up an environmental credit system, (7) improve laws, regulations and policy system.
Regarding follow up, the National Development Reform Commission will be responsible for overall coordination and policy support and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment will in the lead in pushing forward the implementation of the Guideline.
The national forestry authority urged local governments to strengthen the protection of migratory birds and remove threats to their safety as migration season continues.
According to a notice posted on the State Forestry and Grassland Administration’s website on Tuesday, local authorities have been asked to gather accurate information about the species of migratory birds in local territories and the state of their habitats.
Actions should be taken to patrol and guard the birds’ habitats and to clear up nets, traps and poisonous bait set up to hunt them.
Local governments have also been asked to advance efforts on making wildlife protection a part of officials’ performance assessments, a move to push officials to take action in the sector.
NEW YORK – China would play an important role as the climate challenge looms, a report published this month shows. Named Guide to Chinese Climate Policy 2019 and authored by David Sandalow, an inaugural fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, the report examines Chinese carbon dioxide emissions, domestic and foreign policies regarding climate change in 2018.
It says that China has already played an important role in bringing down dramatically the cost of solar power and engaged in making electric vehicles. In 2018, China led the world in deployment of renewable energy, electric vehicles and nuclear power plants.
“The way China integrates climate change into economic development has the potential to be a model for many countries around the world” as many countries would like to emulate China’s economic miracle with eyes closely on its development model, according to the report.