China's Environmental Issues: The Bigger Picture
World Bank completes sector study
Most environmental stories coming out of China
focus on the negatives: the serious air pollution in cities like Beijing, the
widespread water pollution, erosion, deforestation, and the continuing battle
for biodiversity conservation. These problems are real but they are also not the
whole story.
For the last twelve months, a World Bank team has been working with China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and ten Chinese research institutes, universities and NGOs to review the state of the environment, assess the effectiveness of the government's environmental protection work over the last ten years, and to develop recommendations on how to address the new challenges which will face the country over the next five to ten years.
The study has been completed to the final draft stage, and the findings and recommendations were discussed with a wide cross-section of government agencies and Beijing-based donors community at workshops held in Beijing late last month.
According to the report, the environmental story is not as simple as is often made out. While it is true that China's phenomenal growth over the last ten years has extracted a serious environmental toll, the government has also been registering some significant successes. The three most important have been a broad-based and absolute reduction in industrial air and water pollutant emissions during the second half of the 1990s, achieved thanks to a combination of regulation and industrial reform; the reversal of deforestation through massive investments in reforestation and afforestation; and reversal of secondary salinization in irrigation areas through major programs of both control and prevention during the 1980s and extending into the 1990s.
These achievements are arguably unprecedented in any country at China's state of economic development and provide a strong indication that, given a high level of political commitment, real progress can be made.
The report gives credit where credit is due but also warns that the battle is not yet won. The environmental challenge is likely to get far greater and more complex over the next ten years, and the government will have to re-orient its approach, placing less emphasis on "fighting fires" and more emphasis on prevention of environmental problems in the first place.
At the present time, environmental policy is being approached as something that runs in parallel with and perhaps also slightly behind other government development policies. As a result, much of the work of SEPA and other concerned units of government has been directed at remedying the adverse environmental effects of other, generally prior, development decisions. The strategic shift required to deal with future challenges, is to significantly increase the emphasis placed on avoiding or minimizing the adverse environmental effects of development policy in the first place. In other words, it will be necessary to put environmentally sustainable development into action; a concept that is already referred to in the government's strategic planning instruments.
The World Bank's sector study provides a wide range of suggestions on how this objective can be achieved, including action that needs to be taken in respect of the key institutions whose responsibilities impinge on environmentally sustainable development, and the policy and regulatory instruments that are being applied. The team also reviewed many of the government's very large environmental investment programs and provided suggestions on how the effectiveness of environmental investment could be improved.
The reaction at the workshops was generally positive; many of the ideas expressed about mainstreaming of environmental protection into the work of relevant government agencies, improving cross-sectoral coordination, strengthening the pollution control and management, etc., are topics of current debate within government circles and local and international NGOs working in China. The report is seen by SEPA as making an important contribution to the debate and, hopefully, pushing some priority topics towards a resolution.
The first two days of the workshop focused on the technical recommendations while the third day which was attended by major Beijing-based donors and international and national NGOs focused on donor collaboration. The State Environmental Protection Agency is keen on strengthening donor collaboration in the area of environmental protection in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness. As a first step, SEPA proposed to convene a working group to review the effectiveness of the existing donor-funded portfolio on the environment.
SEPA and the Bank team are now working on summarizing all comments received and determining how to wrap up the report. It is planned that it will be published in both Chinese and English. Attached to the report will be a CD-ROM containing a statistical annex comprising about 50 pages of data tables plus the full text of eight specialist technical studies on which the main report was based. Given smooth progress on finalization, it is expected that the report will be published by about May 2001
Useful links: Click here for the World Bank's China web site. Click here for the World Bank's Environment web site. Click here for Tuesday's press view story on China's first "green" five-year plan for economic development.
Quelle: Weltbank
For the last twelve months, a World Bank team has been working with China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and ten Chinese research institutes, universities and NGOs to review the state of the environment, assess the effectiveness of the government's environmental protection work over the last ten years, and to develop recommendations on how to address the new challenges which will face the country over the next five to ten years.
The study has been completed to the final draft stage, and the findings and recommendations were discussed with a wide cross-section of government agencies and Beijing-based donors community at workshops held in Beijing late last month.
According to the report, the environmental story is not as simple as is often made out. While it is true that China's phenomenal growth over the last ten years has extracted a serious environmental toll, the government has also been registering some significant successes. The three most important have been a broad-based and absolute reduction in industrial air and water pollutant emissions during the second half of the 1990s, achieved thanks to a combination of regulation and industrial reform; the reversal of deforestation through massive investments in reforestation and afforestation; and reversal of secondary salinization in irrigation areas through major programs of both control and prevention during the 1980s and extending into the 1990s.
These achievements are arguably unprecedented in any country at China's state of economic development and provide a strong indication that, given a high level of political commitment, real progress can be made.
The report gives credit where credit is due but also warns that the battle is not yet won. The environmental challenge is likely to get far greater and more complex over the next ten years, and the government will have to re-orient its approach, placing less emphasis on "fighting fires" and more emphasis on prevention of environmental problems in the first place.
At the present time, environmental policy is being approached as something that runs in parallel with and perhaps also slightly behind other government development policies. As a result, much of the work of SEPA and other concerned units of government has been directed at remedying the adverse environmental effects of other, generally prior, development decisions. The strategic shift required to deal with future challenges, is to significantly increase the emphasis placed on avoiding or minimizing the adverse environmental effects of development policy in the first place. In other words, it will be necessary to put environmentally sustainable development into action; a concept that is already referred to in the government's strategic planning instruments.
The World Bank's sector study provides a wide range of suggestions on how this objective can be achieved, including action that needs to be taken in respect of the key institutions whose responsibilities impinge on environmentally sustainable development, and the policy and regulatory instruments that are being applied. The team also reviewed many of the government's very large environmental investment programs and provided suggestions on how the effectiveness of environmental investment could be improved.
The reaction at the workshops was generally positive; many of the ideas expressed about mainstreaming of environmental protection into the work of relevant government agencies, improving cross-sectoral coordination, strengthening the pollution control and management, etc., are topics of current debate within government circles and local and international NGOs working in China. The report is seen by SEPA as making an important contribution to the debate and, hopefully, pushing some priority topics towards a resolution.
The first two days of the workshop focused on the technical recommendations while the third day which was attended by major Beijing-based donors and international and national NGOs focused on donor collaboration. The State Environmental Protection Agency is keen on strengthening donor collaboration in the area of environmental protection in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness. As a first step, SEPA proposed to convene a working group to review the effectiveness of the existing donor-funded portfolio on the environment.
SEPA and the Bank team are now working on summarizing all comments received and determining how to wrap up the report. It is planned that it will be published in both Chinese and English. Attached to the report will be a CD-ROM containing a statistical annex comprising about 50 pages of data tables plus the full text of eight specialist technical studies on which the main report was based. Given smooth progress on finalization, it is expected that the report will be published by about May 2001
Useful links: Click here for the World Bank's China web site. Click here for the World Bank's Environment web site. Click here for Tuesday's press view story on China's first "green" five-year plan for economic development.
Quelle: Weltbank
Posted: Fr - März 18, 2005 at 07:33 vorm.
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