SEPA "upgrades" environmental issues "upgrades"

On March 9, the CPPCC National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference discussed the opening to the outside world. Wang Yuqing, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, stated that the State Environmental Protection Administration will be upgraded to the “Ministry of Environmental Protection”, which shows that the country attaches importance to environmental protection. He said that in this reform, there are not many departments promoted to the Ministry, and the State Environmental Protection Administration is the more prominent one. In this way, the State Environmental Protection Administration will be the constituent department of the State Council and will be able to participate more in the comprehensive decision-making of the country. Moreover, the inclusion of environmental issues in major decisions of the State Council is also more powerful and convenient.

In the “festival” of the “Environmental Protection Department” upgraded by the State Environmental Protection Administration, we spontaneously recalled a “squatter” news a few days ago. In the vicinity of the Wujiazhuang Central Elementary School in Weicun Town, Linyi District, Shanxi Province, an illegal chemical factory discharged benzene-containing waste gas and waste water, causing the students of the school and Wujiazhuang village to have different degrees of headaches and nausea. The local villagers collectively squatted and demanded that the factory stop production. This kind of extreme form of civil rights protection also shows from a side that breakthroughs in the public governance of environmental protection have been time-tested.

If "Shang Xia" is not enough to explain the seriousness of this dilemma, then there are even more shocking facts and figures: One-third of China's areas have experienced acid rain, half of China's seven major rivers are heavily polluted, and four One-quarter Chinese residents do not have clean drinking water sources, one-third of urban residents have to breathe dirty air, and environmentally-friendly municipal waste accounts for only a small minority of 20%. Disaster weather, such as rainstorms in Chongqing and Jinan, floods in some provinces and cities in the south, "human and mouse wars" in Dongting Lake, successive outbreaks of water algae such as Taihu Lake, Dianchi Lake and Chaohu Lake, and the resulting Wuxi water Crises and other incidents have made us expect that the environmental protection departments will need to “get true” both in terms of work efficiency and overall management ideas.

The upgrade of the environmental protection department level, although not the master key, can not afford all the weight of the current environmental protection public governance proposition, but this promotion has released a strong signal to the public: environmental protection issues have become truly "upgrading", public The management department has already faced this dilemma and has dared to break through. The upgrading of ranks, and the strength of their functions and work naturally rise. This is exactly the public's delight and anticipation after the upgrade of the State Environmental Protection Administration. Last year, Pan Yue, the deputy director of the General Administration of China, once claimed that “the limitation of the river basin” was my last resort. Therefore, we have reason to expect that only the last one of the environmental protection work will be ushered in the entire “environmental protection” of environmental public governance work because of the upgrading of the ranks.

Of course, we should rationally see that the promotion of rank is only the first step. Here, we cannot but mention a term: "The Qianmu system trap." The historian Qian Mu pointed out in his analysis of Chinese history that the tradition of deducing the Chinese political system is that a system has gone wrong and a system has been set up to prevent it. As time goes on, the more intensive the system, the easier it is to ambiguity, the easier it is to make loopholes, and the easier it is to lose efficiency. The “Qianmu System Trap” tells us that an effective system is not that the more organizations, the higher the specifications, the better. Now that the State Environmental Protection Administration has upgraded to the Ministry, we also have to guard against this "trap" early.

What should even be seen is that the author believes that environmental governance should be a multi-directional public affairs that integrates administrative measures, market forces, and citizen participation. From the level of upgrading, to solve the "hardware" issues such as establishment, function; from the assessment system, to solve the "software" lack of cadres environmental protection power; Third, folks "implore" to manage local pollution cases, highlighting the awareness of civil environmental rights And the enthusiasm of citizens to participate in the growing. Therefore, if we can seize the two aspects of “officials” and “people” at the same time, it will be possible to resolve the final shortcut to the “environmental dilemma”. The search for this short cut may be the direction and effort that we should consider after the Environmental Protection Administration "upgraded." Upgrading is just the beginning, and Xiong Guan really likes irons. Now it is moving from scratch.