According to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), China’s water supply per capita is only one-fourth that of the world average.

The mainland reported recently that GDP growth hit an 11-year high of 11.9 per cent year on year in the second quarter, taking first-half growth to 11.5 per cent. GDP growth rates reported by local governments have been even higher.
Commenting on the sizzling growth in the first half of this year, Lei Ming , of Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, who helped prepare the mainland’s first Green GDP report last year, warned there would be an even greater cost if Beijing failed to implement new "green requirements".
"In some provinces where an energy-intensive and high pollution development model was pursued, the cost of treating the environmental pollution would reach as high as 10 per cent of their local GDP," yesterday’s Shanghai Securities News quoted Professor Lei as saying.
"If these costs are discounted, the actual GDP growth is probably zero or negative."


Nearly 50 years ago, Chairman Mao Zedong introduced a Five-Year Plan (FYP) for the Chinese economy based on the Soviet model of heavy industry. At the time, China was almost 100% agrarian, with the exception of a few factories in the northeast built by the Japanese during their World War II occupation. But in the following decades, massive state-owned factories operating largely without pollution controls sprouted across the country. The fuel that powered this industrial makeover--that still powers nearly 70% of Chinese industry--is coal, one of the country's most abundant resources and the world's dirtiest source of energy. By the 1960s, China was among the most polluted nations on earth, its rivers and groundwater fouled by industrial chemicals and the air in its cities blackened with soot.

The cost of coal. The majority of China's energy needs are still met by heavily polluting coal-fired generating plants such as this one on the Yangtze River in Dukuo, Sichuan.

www.ehponline.org/docs/2002/110-9/focus-abs.html


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The river runs black elizabeth c economy

Local environment bureaus are embedded with the bureaucratic infrasturcture of the local givernments; enourmous pressure may be brought to bear on local environmental protection bureaus by officials converned with maintaing high levels of economic growth no matter the environmental costs.

In some aspects, devolution of authority perpetuates a form of the same traditional, personalistic system of environmental protection that

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China's leaders have allowed the establishment of genuine nongovernmental organizations, encouraged aggressive media attention to environmental issues, sanctioned independent legal activities to protect the environment, parctly to compensate for the weakness of its formal environmental protection apparatus.



China's leaders have also looked abroad for inspiration and assitance.

China has eagerly gobbled up technocal and financial help from international institutions, as well as other countries. China is the largest recipient of environmental aid from the World bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Global Environmental Facility and Japan.

The core agencies behind China's enviornmental protection efforts-the National people's Congress (NPC), which is the top lawmaking body in the country, SEPA, and thejudiciary, headed by the Supreme People's Court- together claim responsibility for the full scope of central government ctivities, including drafting of law, monitering implementation of environmental regulation, and enforcement.

Yet each element of this bureacratic apparatus exhibits fundamental structural weaknesses that undermine the best of intentions.

China's legal system has been widely critisized for its lack of transparency, ill-defined law, weak enforcement capacity and poorly trained advocates and judiciary.

In China, the chief concern is the potential link between stiffer environmental protection laws and economic disruption.

China historically has operated under the rule of men rather than the rule of law.

Under Mao, the law was seen as a means of oppressions and qualified judges were dismissed.

A study of the Chinese court system found that judges often reached decisions by "relying on CCP" policy, views of the local government, and a court's inidvidual sense of justice and fairness in contractual dealings.

Since courts are dependent on the local government for their funding, local officials wield a "potent weapon against judges who would be more willing to enforce the law depsite adverse economic consequences,"

As one environmental lawyer pointed out, "In al the suits that we lost, the courts have not followed the law. Instead, the ignored the legal and technical meris of our case in order to support he local enterprises."

Even when the coutr order is issued, there is no guarantee an EPB will be able to enforce its mandares.



Judges cannot render an informed ruling because they do not understand the basic facts of the case. In many cases, judges are civil servants or demobilized soldiers with only a high school education and no training or practise in law.

devolution of authority

Without a strong central apparatus, however, this highly decentralized system of environmental protection has continued China's prerevolutionary reliance on the nvironmental proclivities of indibidual local officials.

Still, the wealthiest, most environmentally protected cities often pursue environmental cleanup by exporting their polluting industries to points just outdise the city limits.

The campaign mentality

Whil China's leaders have devolved both authority and resposnsibility to local officials for environmental protection, they continue to intervene in environmental management through broad campaigns to address problems of nationwide importance and scope.

They use campaigns to pressure local officials on a full range of macro-environmental threats; deforestation, desertification, and water scarcity.

Campaigns however, suffer from three major shortcomings:
1) they tend to be highly poliicall charged with significant investment upfront but littlw follow-through past the stated target of completion.
2) They rarely consult local officials and business to engage them in the campaign
3) They often do not employ the best set of technologies or incentives to change behaviour.

Overall, these campaigns place extensive burdens on localities with little follow-through from the center and thus, often, fail to achieve the desired results.


Challenges to sustainable development

Water
Ail
Soil
Due to soil erosion, and economic development, Cina has lost one-fifth of its agricultural land since 1949.

Energy

Coal accounts for 65-70% of China's total energy needs. '
Most coal-fired power plants lack sufficient pollution controls.

Plagued with acid rain.

Transportation

Population

Food

Cann et al in "China's Road to Sustainable Development"

1. China ust continue to rigorously control her population.
2. Businesses in China must ardently practice the triple bottom line, with social and environmental benefits being equal or greater footing with economic benefits.
3. China must implement and enforce strict pollution standards.
4. China must promote the use of mass transit rather then automobiles.
5. SEPA must have greater onetray support and political clout. The local environmental protection boards (EPBs), which lare largely responsible for implementing and enforcing environmental regulations, must be given greater authority to impose and collect fines. Fines also must be increased to make it economically prohibitive to pollute.
6. NGOs that are advicates for the environment must be allowed to grow in number and strength.
7.The Chinese must do full cost accounting, which strives to incorporae both environmental and social costs to traditional accounting systems. In addition, the country should eliminate subsidies of pollution-creating and resource-consuing activities and provide disincentives through taxation.

At the same time, financial incentives should be provided for activities that focus on resource and energy conservation and prevent pollution at the souce.

Devolution of authority for environmental protection to local officials was formally enshrined in the 1989 environmental responsibility system.

1.Bureaucratic Fragmentation in the Environmental Policymaking Sector
122 kristen a. day

A related set of bureacratic obstacles frustrates policy implementation. In China, central government ministries oversee lower-level agencies through tight vertical lines of authority, These vertical lines obstruct horizontal coordination among local government agencies, particularly when resource management issues cut accross jurisdtictional boundaries. For example, if one county received pollution dumped upream by a couty upstream, water pollution and water management law mandate that the provincianal government mediate the conflict.

2. Competing Environmental Policy Bureacracies.

SEPA shares the same official rank as other functional lin minsitries in the central government,

Therefore, SEPA and EPBs are nested in a matrix of authority relationshis that hamper the development and implementation of environmental policies when interests conflict

3. Weak Enforcement of Environmental Policies.

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Low priority for environmental programs in general, and hazardous waste in particular.
2. Inadequate funding of environemental programs and limited development of coomercial markets for centralized waste tre
3. lack of appropriate legislation and regulations to implement an effective program
3. Weak enforcement of environmental regulations and standards, and minimal culture of compliance.
5. lack od integrated