Against crisis, China attempts to tighten enforcement of pollution laws

Following last month's acid spill in Jiangsu, China's government has acted to tighten enforcement of the country's environmental laws. Charles McElwee's China Environmental Law Blog reports that the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) has issued a new Notice containing several innovative policies, including a focus on corrective action, designed to strengthen enforcement of China's environmental laws (see also previous post on problems in the country's environmental enforcement).

This move comes as part of a broader effort by Beijing to improve environmental protection, especially as it concerns water pollution. In February, following the Jiangsu disaster, a senior MEP official acknowledged that despite several previous attempts to control pollution, "The general situation of environmental pollution does not allow us to be optimistic" (see Xinhua).

This month appears to have brought redoubled efforts to redress the situation. An MEP circular issued last week castigated local authorities for lax enforcement of water pollution laws, and to improve water quality monitoring (see Xinhua). Officials also announced today (March 30) that thirteen officials in Henan province were punished (one with a prison sentence) for failing to stop arsenic contamination on a stretch of the Dasha river, which news reports said was some 899 times healthy levels (see Xinhua).

Such efforts to strengthen the enforcement of environmental laws are necessary, but they illustrate an important failing in China's environmental policy: its obsession with the idea of a centralized "policy cudgel." What I mean by this is the insistence that the central government's policies would indeed improve China's environmental situation, if only local governments could be cowed into following orders (this appears to be a primary motivation behind recent MEP Regional Supervision Centers- more on this later). This approach is far too blunt an instrument, particularly when China's legal system doesn't bear anything like the enforcement capabilities wielded by, say, the US Environmental Protection Administration.

Instead of focusing on building a bigger and more potent cudgel, Beijing should focus on the longer-term tasks of enhancing citizen participation and NGO monitoring capabilities to aid in environmental enforcement, while also pursuing political and legal reforms that will make it easier to take polluters, and the corrupt officials that protect them, to court. Promotion of officials based on economic growth statistics should be ended. Moreover, less coercive, market-based approaches like Payment for Ecosystem Services should be pursued aggressively.

Robust environmental protection requires an expensive, resource- and bureaucracy-intensive edifice. But the public interests it protects- clean air, clean water, healthy people- are vital to a prosperous, sustainable society.

Dealing with transboundary water pollution in China

Most water pollution by nature crosses boundaries; in China, incidents like February's acid leak in Jiangsu indicate the inability of local authorities to deal with contamination. A good recent post on water security by Ma Jun on China Dialogue reports that, on average, there's an environmental incident in China once every two days, 70% of which involve water pollution. A delegate to China's People's Political Consultative Committee highlighted the trans-boundary water pollution issue by calling for the development of a compensation system, a first step toward establishing clear liability for water polluters.

The delegate, also the Vice-President of Anhui University, Wu Cunmei, noted that it is impossible to prevent contaminated water from flowing through watersheds. The national government should, Wu said, quickly establish a dispute-resolution and compensation mechanism for transboundary water pollution (see China Environment Report, in Chinese only).

As Wu noted, regions near the headwaters of river systems often garner economic benefits by polluting watersheds for downstream users, who must bear the costs themselves. This kind of "local protectionism," (地方保护主义) Wu said, damages the whole national system for preventing water pollution, making it an imperative to develop new mechanisms for transboundary dispute resolution and compensation.

None of this is really news, but it's heartening to hear a delegate to one of China's important "two meetings" (两会) speak so forcefully about environmental protection, and to single out watersheds for the development of an eco-compensation framework. Many experts agree that eco-compensation is particularly suitable for use in watersheds, where the benefits of clean water are clear for both upstream and downstream users (see previous post). Providing local governments with a means to "sue" other jurisdictions might also provide a potent secondary-enforcement mechanism, by deterring areas that may be tempted to adopt lax enforcement.

Nonetheless, creating a robust compensation and dispute-resolution system will be thorny. As long as local officials are rewarded chiefly for effecting economic growth, there will be strong incentives to "pass the cost along" by allowing industry to pollute with minimal enforcement and mitigation (see previous post). Moreover, a compensation regime should be carefully designed to encourage watershed management, not just to compensate downstream users for pollution. It's difficult to include the benefits of, for example, preserving forest cover near river system headwaters in any compensation regime.

Here's an opportunity for an enterprising NGO (or even friendly foreign government?) to step in and offer to provide expertise to the Chinese government in constructing a durable watershed pollution compensation and dispute resolution mechanism. As water scarcity increases and the pollution problem becomes more ingrained, China's leadership will surely be grateful for all the help they can get.

Jiangsu acid leak exposes another hole in China's environmental enforcement apparatus

Coming right on the heels of northern China's severe drought, another environmental disaster has gripped newspaper headlines: "Toxic water scare leaves a sour taste" (see China Daily). Water supply to more than 200,000 residents of Yancheng, Jiangsu province, was disrupted after carbolic acid was found to have contaminated the city's water system. Carbolic acid can damage the central nervous system as well as the kidneys and heart.

Local officials claimed to have inspected the water supply and found nothing amiss, but reports from residents suggest a longer-term pattern of incompetence and denial. According to the article,

Petitions calling for action by the government [to curb water pollution] also went unanswered, said fellow villager Zhou Weixiang, who added: "The factory is said to have contributed a lot to the local tax revenue. We could do nothing about it."

None of this is terribly surprising. Local governments are often blamed for severe lapses in environmental monitoring and enforcement (see previous post). But as one in a string of environmental disasters to hit China in recent months, CGS considers that the Jiangsu incident should persuade Beijing that it is right to be worried about environmental discontent in the Year of the Ox (see previous post).