China’s new guidelines on environmental protection according to 3 kinds of zones
On March 6, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council issued important guidelines on environmental protection according to different ecological management zones.
The guidelines titled “关于加强生态环境分区管控的意见”(Guidelines on Strengthening Ecological Environment Zoning Management and Control), declared that the zoning system will be essentially established by 2025, and the system will be full-fledged and functioning efficiently by 2035.
The zones will be in three categories. The first category is “生态环境优先保护单元”(Ecological Environment Protection Priority Zone), which will be decided by the ecological protection red lines. The second category is “生态环境重点管控单元”(Ecological Environment Management and Control Priority Zone), which will include areas with high pressure to improve ecological environment quality, high resource and energy consumption intensity, high tensity of pollutant emissions, serious ecological damage, and those with high environmental risks. The second category zone will focus on the conflicts between economic development and ecological environment protection. And all other areas belong to the third category named as “Others.”
According to the Guidelines, three categories will take different measures to improve ecological environment. To my understanding, for the first category, the task is to simply protect the ecological environment, and economic development will not be considered as priority. For the second category, the task is to improve ecological environment amid economic and social development which is much difficult. For the third category, the task will not be so difficult as the first and second categories.
We can expect that after the zoning system established, different policies will be implemented in different zones. I will pay more attentions to what kind of policies will be implemented in the zones of the second category (Ecological Environment Management and Control Priority Zone) while keeping an eye on the first category zones (Ecological Environment Protection Priority Zone). If China can have good solutions to solve the problems between economic development and ecological environment protection, that will be excited news to the world and the experience will be valuable.
The Guidelines also indicated that the zoning will be adjusted every five years in accordance with national economic and social development plan (China’s five-year plan) and land spatial planning assessment.
The website link with the Chinese version of the Guidelines is here: http://www.scio.gov.cn/zdgz/jj/202403/t20240318_838290.html
Bests to you all,
Cherie
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