China Environmental Law

In the first tangible sign that The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) is gaining some clout after achieving full-ministerial status, it was announced on July 10 that MEP is setting up two new departments and has been authorized to hire 50 additional staff. 

The English report provides very little detail concerning these developments, and I have not been able to find a Chinese version yet.  There will apparently be a new “supervision” department and a new “monitoring” department.  The 50 new employees will be hired to support these departments, bringing total the total MEP headcount to about 300.

What exactly these departments will do is not clear, but the added focus on “monitoring” is said to “signif[y] the ministry’s added emphasis on controlling emissions nationwide and is line with the country’s target to cut 10 percent of major pollutants by 2010.”

“The concept of total emissions control will allow the introduction of economic measurements to curb pollution, such as an emissions trading system, ” Mao [Shoulong, public policy professor of the Beijing-based Renmin University] said.

To that effect, the country is expected to establish a national cap-and-trade system for SO2 emissions, to deal with pollution from the power industry.

These efforts reportedly need a more precise monitoring of environmental quality, including the calculation of total emissions.

The total number of MEP employees is still woefully small for a country the size of China, but in this time of governmental belt tightening as a result of the Sichuan earthquake, a 20% increase in employees symbolically emphasizes the importance of environmental protection.