China Environmental Law

If any local officials are actually tagged for failing to achieve environmental or energy goals within their jurisdictions, they can’t say they weren’t warned.  Whether China’s environmental watchdog has any new “bite” remains to be seen, but it certainly has increased the volume of its barking.

Xinhua reports 

The Ministry of Environment Protection on Wednesday [September 10] put the leaders of 21 provincial-level governments on notice that they would be held personally accountable for the continued pollution of seven main waterways.

(Strangely, this article was reissuedyesterday without any changes including refering to the meeting as occurring “on Wednesday” which would imply today instead of September 10).

The seven main waterways are the Huaihe, Haihe, Liaohe, Songhua rivers, the middle and upper streams of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers as well Chaohu and Dianchi lakes.

Zhou [Shengxian reported] that emissions had fallen by only 2.3 percent for the past two years, meaning more reductions totaling 7.7 percent were required in less than three years.

Zhou apparently averaged the declines in COD and SO2 emissions to arrive at the 2.3% reduction figure.  It seems pretty clear that the Ministry is beginning to feel a little anxious about the likelihood of meeting the 5-year targets.

Criminal and quasi-criminal sanctions are also being ramped up.  The article notes that

In August, the ministry submitted a proposal to the National People’s Congress, China’s top law-making body, seeking powers to detain for up to 15 days people responsible for illegally discharging dangerous chemicals into water [including, leaders found guilty of dereliction of duty].

We commented on that develop in this post. 

In a separate Xinhua article last week, it was reported that

China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) has promised that more efforts will be made over the next five years to combat crimes involving officials wasting energy and resources.

Prosecutors will investigate job-related crimes that damage resources and the environment, and conduct synchronized investigations with other administrative departments on project-related major accidents. . . .

The latest measures was released by the SPP for the implementation of its 2008-12 Work Plan to Establish a System to Strength the Punishment and Prevention of Corruption state.

The SPP noted that it had “already sent prosecutors to help investigate the cause of the mudslide in Shanxi province.”

A couple of  interesting, if random, facts where cited in the Xinhua articles:

• local environmental watchdogs nationwide reported water pollution cases every other day, and the number increased by 30 percent in the first half year from the same period of last year.
• 1.6 million cases of water pollution had been reported through a government hotline since the beginning of 2003.
• Between 2004 and last year, procuratorates punished 3,822 people for excessive use of energy and resources, and for causing damage to the environment.