China Environmental Law

Ever since the 7th Five -Year Plan China has prepared a separate environmental protection plan.  The contents of the 12th Five-Year plan (十二五) are already under consideration, and we got a very broad view of the national planning effort and a more specific view of the Shanghai planning effort at the “Call for Green China” conference yesterday.

The conference was well-conceived and executed.  It was not designed to be very interactive and it was not.  There were speeches from Li Ganjie, Vice Minister and new public face of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP); David Dollar, Country Director for the World Bank, and the Norwegian Consul General-Norway was the sponsor of the event.

On the planning front, we heard from Wu Shunze, Deputy Director General of the China Academy of Environmental Planning (about the national efforts) and Lin Weiqing, Chief Engineer at the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences (who spoke, naturally, about Shanghai’s efforts).

I suppose, given that the environmental protection plan is simply part of (or is at least meant to dove tail with) the larger socio-economic development plan, that there are certain constraints on the planning process for the environmental plan.  Still it is a little disconcerting to see that the 1^st of the three “Guiding Principle” for the development of the plan is “Optimizing economic development.”  The other two are “Improving environmental quality” and “Guaranteeing environmental security” (I’m not clear on what this last one means).

The plan starts with several assumptions as to the state of social and economic development and uses these as the assumptions for plan development.  In other words, China “define[s] the planning orientation and emphases based on the development phases.” 

What are the development phases?  Here’s what we were provided:

• Around 2020:  Industrialization will be basically completed.  China will become a “middle-income” country.  The economy and society will be in transition, and the “resource and environment are in conflict [sic].” 
• 2020-2030: China will enter the transition between the industrialization and “economic structure,” and the pattern of the economy will be adjusted greatly.  Peak of resource and energy use and environmental problems will probably appear.
• 2030-2050: Modernization will be completely realized in China.  The tertiary industry will grow fast, and it will achieve a comparatively high level among the middle-income countries.  There will be an “inflexion” of the discharge of conventional pollutants.  “With the combined effect of technical progress, transition of economic structure and consumption patters, the environmental pressure will be alleviated gradually.”
• 2050: China will become a high-income country, with mature urbanization, and will probably become the largest economic entity exceeding the US.

So the premises which underlie the planning effort for 十二五 are that:

1. The “[s]cale effect of the pollution increase and extensive technical effect of pollution reduction are still in the strategic stalemate phase in general.”  By this, I think the planners mean that China will essentially tread water on total pollution reduction efforts over the period; the increased pollution from high rates of industrial growth (which will still include significant industrial development) will barely be contained by the country’s pollution reduction efforts. You should not assume, however, that as a result of this conclusion China will not continue to seek reductions in the discharges of certain key pollutant parameters.
2. During the 十二五 China will climb up the phase of industrialization with $2000-4000 per capita GDP, “which is the rising phase of the Environmental Kuznets’ Curve.” (see here for more information, scroll down to “Environmental Kuznets’ Curve”). 

The reference to the “curve” here is instructive as to the whole environmental planning effort.  The planners seem to conclude that many elements of China’s environmental development path are pre-ordained.  Now we are in this phase where we can expect this to happen, then we enter the next phase where we can expect that to happen.  The planning process seems gripped with an economic fatalism, and the pre-ordained economic development model determines environmental progress. 

As I understand it the Environmental Kuznets’ Curve is explained on the basis that rising living standards give raise to a change in societal focus from concerns solely about economic growth to concerns about quality of life especially environment.  Thus, the curve describes a social or political process.  It may have relevance in a democratic environment, but there is no reason why it would necessarily be predictive in a planned economy.  That is the discouraging impression I came away with when considering this planning process; China is not utilizing its environmental plan to “push” outcomes.

Here’s how China sees it all playing out:

So what do China’s fatalistic national environmental planners have in store for the十二五?  They aren’t giving out many specifics.  The “[objectives, tasks and measures of the Twelfth Five-Year Environmental Protection Plan will be decided with the view to the overall well off society objective in 2020, and the environmental protection objective in 2030 and 2050.”  Neither the written materials nor the accompanying talk mentioned green house gases.

Next up: Shanghai’s Plan