Watchdog pledge

The country's massive investment plan will not come at the price of environment deterioration. Strict environmental evaluation of all the new projects is mandatory before construction starts, according to sources from the country's environmental watchdog.

Wu Xiaoqing, vice-minister of environmental protection says recently that the ministry will place strict checks on energy-intensive, high-emissions, and heavy polluting projects in the national investment to boost economic development.

The ministry has recently postponed approval for six chemical and thermal power projects with a total investment of 39.4 billion yuan.

Wu says the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) will continue to facilitate industrial structure adjustments and eliminate backward production facilities under the framework of the country's massive investment plan.

The ministry will also speed up the approval process of environmental impact assessments of proposed economic boosting projects, according to Wu.

"MEP will set up a 'green passage' for boosting domestic demand," says Wu.

Since the unveiling of the country's 4-trillion-yuan investment package, MEP has strengthened its work on examining the environment assessment reports, according to Wu.

On November 26 and 28, MEP approved environmental assessment reports for 93 projects, with a total investment surpassing 260 billion yuan, among which, 18 are about infrastructure construction, such as transportation and water conservation.

MEP also worked closely with the Ministry of Railways on the assessment of railway constructions. Six rail lines with a total investment of 38.7 billion yuan have won approval recently.

"The projects' impacts on the environment have to be examined before getting approval from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)," a senior official from Ministry of Environmental Protection tells China Business Weekly, "this is written in the law."

China's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Law, effective since 2003, requires identifying and evaluating adverse effects to the environment and proposing measurements to mitigate them prior to project construction.

As energy-intensive and high-emission projects have been ruled out in the massive fiscal stimulus plan, the investment package will not add too much of a burden to China's environment, said the official who declined to be named.

A large portion of the investment has been directed to infrastructure, such as railway and road construction, expanding and building airports, according to the latest budgets publicized.

The environmental risks of these infrastructure projects are lower than industrial projects, which tend to generate harmful emissions that contaminate water and air, according to an EIA expert.

"Damages to the ecological environment are the major impacts of infrastructure construction, but with careful EIA works, the risks can be controlled," Liu Shu, a researcher at Research Institute of Highway affiliated with Ministry of Transport, who specializes in EIA on road constructions, tells China Business Weekly.

Conservation of water and soil, stability of ecological system, biodiversity, and productivity of species are listed as the major concerns of and railway road construction.

But EIA includes the treatments for these problems, Liu says. For instance, side-slope protection works along the railway can prevent the loss of water and soil.

"Usually 3 to 5 percent of the total investment for a railway or road construction project is used to address environmental problems." Liu says, "With proper measurements, the ecological system along the rail lines and roads can be fully restored."

(China Daily December 8, 2008)