China strengthens environmental laws

Amendments to country's environmental protection are first in 25 years and will remove limits on fines for polluting factories
Jonathan Kaiman theguardian.com 25 Apr 14;

Chinese legislators have passed the first amendments to the country’s environmental protection law in 25 years, promising greater powers for environmental authorities and harsher punishments for polluters.

The amendments, which the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress passed on Thursday after two years of debate, will allow authorities to detain company bosses for 15 days if they do not complete environmental impact assessments or ignore warnings to stop polluting. The new law will come into practice on 1 January.

Since China’s environmental protection law was passed in 1989, the country has become the world’s second-largest economy and its biggest carbon emitter; decades of breakneck economic growth have left many of its rivers desiccated and its cities perennially shrouded in smog.

Over the past year, the Chinese government has begun to emphasise environmental protection in its official rhetoric. The new law “sets environmental protection as the country’s basic policy,” state news agency Xinhua reported.

At an annual parliamentary meeting in March, premier Li Keqiang said that the government will “resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty”.

Yet environmental groups say that China’s greatest environmental problems arise from a gap between legislation and implementation.

“If you look at China’s air pollution or water pollution control laws, they’re pretty good compared to global standards,” said Ma Tianjie, program director for mainland work at Greenpeace East Asia. “But no matter how good [the laws] look on paper, the true test will always be the willingness of local authorities to enforce them.”

The amended law will remove limits on fines for polluting factories, which are currently so low that many enterprises prefer to pay them than take long-term anti-pollution measures. It will also encourage “studies on the impact environmental quality causes on public health, urging prevention and control of pollution-related diseases,” Xinhua
reported.

“Local officials may be demoted or sacked, if they are guilty of misconduct, including covering up environment-related wrongdoing,” the newswire reported. “If offenders' behaviors constitute crimes, they will be held criminally responsible.”

This month, Chinese environmental researchers concluded that nearly 60% of the country’s groundwater quality is either “relatively poor” or “very poor”. A separate official report claimed that 16% of the country’s land is polluted, some of it with chemicals such as arsenic and mercury. Earlier this month, dangerous levels of the carcinogenic chemical benzene were detected in the northwestern city Lanzhou’s water supply, triggering a run on bottled water.

Reducing the country’s noxious smog has also become a challenge for growth-minded local officials. On Thursday, the UK shadow climate change minister Baroness Byrony Worthington led a well-attended "training course" for Chinese mayors on strategies for combatting air pollution.

“Every single person we’ve met so far has mentioned the words, ‘smoggy weather,’” said Worthington, who is on a four-day trip to China representing Globe International, an organisation of legislators focused on sustainable development. “They fear that the external world is pointing and laughing at this stage which China’s environment has
reached – it’s a kind of loss of face.”