Latest comments posted about Hainan: a province under pressure on ChinaDialogue en-gb http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1498-Hainan-a-province-under-pressure http://staging.chinadialogue.net/images/cdlogo.gif http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1498-Hainan-a-province-under-pressure The general public in China is not indifferent to environmental issues. They would have their own opinions if their rights were being infringed. The Environmental Pollution Law was added in 1997 however, by 2007 there were only 3 cases of infringment of this law. In 2002, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved the Environmental Impact Assessment Law which should secure a channel of public participation in environmental protection. Yet, a crucial part has been removed from the law, leaving behind only abstract terms. The execution of the law is undermined and the scope for public participation has been narrowed. Various barriers against environmental lawsuits have been formed in terms of the relevance of the law, the qualification and fees of lawsuits, the filing of investigation and prosecution, the burden of proof, the execution of judgment, etc. Such environmental bills are similar to a "Catch-22", which means that people have limited power in initiating environmental actions, which thus results in a highly "government-dependent" environmental mentality. In this situation, the environmental provinces are merely an internal movement within the government and its environmental protection bodies. The usual practice is, the county and city governments would call for a mobilisation meeting in which objectives can be concluded. The environmental R & D organisations would then be authorised by the governments' environmental bodies to plan for ways to attain the objectives. The plans would be submitted for approval by the local National People's Congress after comments are sought from the other governmental departments. Respective governmental bodies closely control aspects ranging from the planning of ecological provinces to the construction projects. The whole decision process does not involve any participation from the public, enterprises and public organisations. Even for those discussions that promote public participation, no practical measures could be provided. Instead of the public's rights of environmental protection, most of the discussions emphasise their responsibilities. Another problem is that, most ecological provinces planning is extremely city-centred, from the planning to the projects and the allocation of capital. To a certain extent, the ecological provinces have become an city beautification campaign, as seen from the drainage of urban rivers, road maintenance, renewal of old districts, tree planting and gardening. Even old giant trees are relocated from the countryside and rural areas to the cities, which is merely for the sake of greening the city. This is called the “greening transfer”. The returning farmland to forest policy, which is in line with the building of ecological provinces, is threatening the livelihood of millions of poor families. These families are rarely aided by the central government's financial transfer when it reaches the local governments. Why would the public support the building of such ecological provinces? One of the solutions is to immediately eliminate all barriers against environmental lawsuits and to develop a system of public lawsuit, so that each citizen can be encouraged to put forward a lawsuit in the face of the surrounding environmental problems. To change the course of the deteriorating environment, the prosecuting rights shall be extended to cover any citizen, corporation or organisation that has direct or indirect interests in the legal case. Such rights shall be specifically defined for the “representatives of public interests” who belong to public organisations, even their personal interests are not involved in the cases. In this way, the scattered resources can then be centralised, the rights can be secured which otherwise is impossible with individual effort, the efficiency of lawsuits can be improved and legal resources can be taken care of. As the techniques in tackling environmental problems are complex, while the costs of investigation and evidents remain high, apart from encouraging the development of independent monitoring and identification organisations, the principle of “the burden of prosecution and proof” shall be amended so that the current direction of the burden of proof can be reversed and the polluters are liable for providing proofs. Therefore, the normal development of public environmental protection organisations can be supported. As stipulated by the Registration of Social Organisations Ordinance, the establishment of public organizations shall be assessed and approved by the “responsible units for the business”, and not more than one public organisation in “the same or similar field of business” shall exist in the same administrative district. Such regulations greatly hinder the development of environmental protection organizations. The terms and regulations of public organisations shall thus be immediately amended so that such restrictions shall be discarded. We shall also support the activities initiated by the volunteers of environmental protection groups, for they will become the hardcore supporters of environmental protection in the society. Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:41:41 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9007 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9007 Can we depend on the environmental market if we scarcely have enough capital? It is a pity that the environmental market has not been set up in China yet. The current environmental laws and regulations mainly focus on orders dissemination and management. As for the Environmental Protection Law, apart from Article 6 which directly concerns about the market’s rights, and Article 40 & 41 that imply the rights enjoyed by the market, the rest only state the management authority over the environmental administrative bodies. This mechanism means that, the environmental industry has always been a monopoly as the governments are responsible for establishing the ecological provinces. Government officers depend on national stipends, while allowances are given to the maintenance of facilities and operation. The urban governmental bodies also monopolize the management of daily sewage and waste disposal which could otherwise be run by local organizations. Most of the local environmental organizations are concurrently run and monitored by the environmental bureaus. They are responsible for the design and construction of environmental projects as well as the building of facilities. This kind of "environmental corruption" is the main source of environmental pollution. The "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution" stipulates that any people or organizations that deal with atmospheric pollution shall be managed by the responsible units of above-county-level governments. Yet, law execution is extremely difficult as enterprises are not independent from the governments. It is similar to the Chinese saying, "mothers never beat up their children with full strength". The environmental execution bodies are inferior and fail to make changes as the local governments, the National People's Congress and People's Political Consultative Conference stand as the responsible entities for polluting giant companies. In 1999, Zhu Rongji (the ex-Premier of PRC) pointed out the difficulty of charging sewage cost is due to the fact that many national enterprises pay sewage fees by bank loans. "It is still the same sum of money except that part of it is in our left pocket while another is in our right pocket”, he said. What’s more, in certain districts, even some kind of industries may largely damage the ecological environment and intense objection is voiced by the general public, the local government would approve them simply because of the great contribution to the local GDP. Therefore, enterprises would shift the responsibilities to the governments, rather than seeing themselves as the chief driver for environmental protection. The environmental market is thus no more than ideals. To deal with the failure of market mechanism, the governments need to eliminate industrial monopoly and become independent from the enterprises. “The tragedy of the commons” can be avoided, when the negative externalities and the environmental risks are internalized as prices and ownership of the resource elements are clearly defined. Then, the market of resource elements can be created so that price levels can reflect the demand-supply relationship, the scarcity of resources, the damage on the environment and the induced cost of governance. To implement the system of sewage charge and to allow the system of license transaction, China is especially in need of publicizing the environmental messages and reducing the allowances for the energy-using products at the time being. Of course, to remove the ultimate cause of problem, the counter-action against the malpractice of “concentrating authority and forgoing responsibilities” is to allow the public and the society to obtain the rights of direct management of resources. Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:41:02 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9006 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9006 Readjust the access to resources of central and local government “Ecological Province”, undertaking the environmental governance and protection in the unit of province, is a strategy to reverse the trend of “protecting the micro, damaging the macro and overall deteriorating”. But now the ecological integrity remains acute conflict with the highly fragmented administration model. Between the administrations, the responsibility and authority is not clear, which often causes conflict of interests. The authorities of firing, licensing, and dispatching items are scrambling as hot cake, while unprofitable things are snubbing as hot potatoes. Between the central and local government, since the system of tax distribution is launched, revenue above the central budget has increased sharply while the output decrease constantly. Nowadays, proportion of central budget revenue reaches 50%-60%, but proportion of the environmental protection expenditure is 20% -30%. The proportion of such income and expenditure is opposed to the central support for the intention to build ecological provinces. However, the provinces, municipalities possess most financial and material resources, manpower and authorities. But as the grass-roots of ecological construction and environmental protection, most of counties, villages, towns, residential districts are in financial difficulties and lack of environmental resources. Many locals have set up ecological areas. But except for some national and provincial funding for protected areas, the areas at county level almost devote no funding. The so called protection will only be linked to a piece of card. In addition, the highly concentration of legislation power makes locals are lack of legislation innovating space. Though the ecological conditions and economical conditions differs greatly from different parts in our country, the existing environmental protection laws and regulations are for the whole country, which cannot be fully taken into account the actual situation around; much of the content is old, infeasible and some measures are very weak. For example, according to legislation law, procedural regime and arbitration system is decided by the central, locals have no authorities to make legislation. This is a big obstacle to ecological provinces pushing forward public interest litigation. We can let the ecological provinces explore major breakthroughs of resource system and readjust the access to resources of central and local government. For example, as Han Nan Province has the biggest ocean area in nation, it should have a part of the authorities of Nanhai Oil [0.05 -1.89%], exploiting natural gas; and get necessary financial support. To realize this needs to reform current reputation and extend local authorities of exploiting oil and natural gas. Besides, we needs to continue to adjust tax distribution system formed in 1994; increase local budgetary financial revenue and meanwhile extra-budgetary revenue and expenditure; put building ecological province into priority expenditures projects on-budget. The distribution of tax between all local levels should continue to be regulated, to transfer the financial power and material power to lower level governments as much as possible. Expenditure on environmental protection, guaranteed by fiscal system and supervised by public, will dramatically cut item charges, prevent misfeasance of generating profits, in turn solve the inefficiency on government’s environmental protection caused by departmental conflicts of interest. Translated by Zhang Liang. Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:39:55 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9005 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9005 Besides, another property--community property system--can be established in the transition zone of the state property and the market property. In order to solve problems such as losing control of national properties of resources and the external defects of private properties, appropriate separation can be made among the ownership, management, disposition and usufruct of natural resources. Also, on the premise of the strict governmental and social supervision, some environmental properties can be transferred to direct stakeholders under certain conditions; or, we can projectise some practices of environmental protection and ecological construction, cooperating with communities, voluntary organisations, foundations, associations or other non-profit organisations through entrusted management, buying service and subsidies. In this way, can the construction of a ecological province be sustainable action initiated from the society rather than being executed by the central government. --written by a professor at Central South University Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:42:24 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9008 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-9008 Save the eco-provinces Author: Yan Min June 5 was “World Environment Day”. Widely deemed the world’s workshop, China is still a long way off finishing its industrialization, but its environment capacity has been strained to the limit. Perhaps building eco-province is one of the possible options for China to deal with its environmental problems. As early as 1983 Yu Guangyuan proposed “building Qinghai Province into an eco-province”. Yet it was never put into action. With passage of time even the term “eco-province” itself passed into oblivion. Ten years ago when the economic bubble burst in Hainan Special Economic Zone, Yan Jiaan, a member of the Jiu San Society, and I jointly put forward the conception of building eco-province, we knew nothing of this part of history. Since then, the conception of eco-province has been adopted in 14 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities such as Jilin and Heilongjiang. Eco-province was a unique creation in the process of China’s reform. It stemmed from the expansion of local governments’ volitional right and grassroot involvement as well as reflection on the downsides of traditional economic growth pattern. Unfortunately, however, it is facing the malfunction of government, market and society, and the impending risk of foaming. The root cause lies with the fundamental flaws of the environmental protection mechanism in China, that is, the central government is overwhelmed with workload and duties, whereas governments at grass-root level, the populace and enterprises are incapable of dealing with their share of duties and work. Thus a knot of control-reliance comes into form among government, market and society. At this time a series of overhauls concerning the administrative structure are needed to untie the gordian knot. An excerpt from Southern China Weekend Link: http://www.infzm.com/content/29505 （本文由杨宾翻译） Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:48:56 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-8963 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-8963 Environment is devastated at a quicker pace than we expected while what we can do is limited. People devastating environment outnumber those protecting it.While everyone is complaining degradation of environment,shall we also do something to protect it? I am wondering whether it helps that we eat more fruit which are in season and local. Fri, 23 Nov 2007 21:30:23 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-5029 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-5029 Clearing Hainan's remaining tropical forests to make room to plant eucalyptus trees for the paper industry obviously is a destructive practice. Much of South China's native forest has been been destroyed in the past for many other thoughless reasons. The result has been widespread degraded lands across South China. Once the land is degraded, in some cases interplanting rubber with other desireable crops can play a part in the partial restoration of the land's original productivity http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n2/resource.htm. Intercropping research at China's Xishuangbanna Botanical Garden in Yunnan demonstrates that some degraded lands do have potential for at least partial recovery. Whether wildlife can respond positively to living in such artificial systems needs further research and discussion. W. Parham parham305@aol.com Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:48:33 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-4860 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-4860 In my opinion Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan are all in danger, let alone Hainan. Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:36:11 +0000 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-4899 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1498#comment-4899