The environmental risk in China has broken the regional or industrial boundary and is becoming increasingly complicated. Severe environmental problems, such as air pollution, water pollution, and soil pollution, etc. frequently take place in different areas and different fields, which has aroused wide attention in the society. Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution and Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution were officially enforced on June 1st, 2008 and January 1st, 2016 respectively, and the Soil Pollution Prevention Action Plan is about to be released. The ecological environment protection is now in a hard-won window period, a promising period with strategic opportunities and a critical period with difficulties. However, the present environmental management system has many problems, including selective enforcement of policies, fragmentation of administrative management, and the marginalization of non-administrative-subjects, etc. From a strategic perspective of governance, we are in urgent need of actions, that is, fundamentally solving the long-standing problem, leading the innovation of system and mechanism with renewed ideas, and constructing and improving China’s environmental management system with “cause elimination, multi-level governance, linkage mechanism, legal guarantee” so as to push forward the modernization of environmental management abilities.

Firstly, we need to cultivate the ecological culture and internalize people’s environmental awareness and ecological responsibility. We should find and learn the essence of ecological ideas in Chinese traditional culture such as “man is an integral part of nature” and “all is one”, strengthen the national awareness of ecological civilization, and cultivate the ecological culture in awe of nature. We should follow the idea of sustainable development and establish a long-tern mechanism of a balanced development of economy, population, resources and environment. Moreover, we should enhance environmental education at schools and popularize knowledge of environmental protection at communities, strengthen citizens’ sense of crisis, sense of responsibility, and sense of mission in environmental protection, establish ethical values of green environment, internalize the environmental culture as our thinking model and behavior manner so as to form citizens’ environmental subconsciousness.

Secondly, we need to optimize watershed management system and unify the economic development and ecological environment protection. We should correctly cope with the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, stick to the concept of modern government, earnestly push forward the transformation from economy-oriented government to public-service-oriented government, and reconstruct the country’s legal source. We should optimize environmental auditing system, strengthen the management of local government performance in energy saving and emission reduction, prevention and control of pollution, ecological development, etc., improve the development goal system and assessment mechanism embodying ecological civilization. We should also build a life-long responsibility system, and strengthen the administrative accountability and legal accountability of the person in charge, so as to completely eliminate the GDP-oriented action logic.

It is recommended that we comprehensively consider the different natural resources, economic structure, and social culture, etc. of different areas, strengthen the assessment and admission in environmental protection, focus our efforts on building an innovation-driven, resource-saving and environment-friendly modern industrial system, and promote the transformation of dynamic for economic development from the input of essential production factors to reform and innovation and structural adjustment. We should thoroughly push forward the economical and intensive use of and the rational exploitation of resources and energy, support the development of the new energy industry and the renewable energy industry, so as to improve the ecological efficiency and realize the source control of environmental pollution.

We should establish a strict ecological protection and restoration system, and enhance the supervision over guarantee of ecological functions, safety of environmental quality, and utilization of natural resources, etc. We should also practice a strict spatial boundary and control limit so as to effectively protect water conservation regions, ecological shelter zones, and ecological vulnerable zones. We should strictly control the total water consumption, keep the warning limit of arable land, supervise the use of land, and improve the comprehensive bearing capacity of resources and environment. Besides, we need to comprehensively manage desertification, stony desertification and soil erosion, and prevent environmental degradation.

Thirdly, we need to establish a multi-level governance mechanism and exercise supervision over social policies and integrity. We should specify the status, power and responsibility of the stakeholders, including the government, enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and the public, etc., build an equal-footed dialogue mechanism, and form a positive and interactive multi-level governance mechanism of the environment. We should implement hearing system, improve the environmental information disclosure and notification system, build a community public participation mechanism and institutionalized internet participation mechanism, and make environmental laws, regulations, and policies, etc. through sufficient negotiation. We should also strengthen the development of social supervision system, improve the reporting system of environmental protection, ensure an effective complaint hot-line of the environmental protection so as to make sure a real-time supervision and implementation.

We should incorporate environmental integrity into the social credit checking system, force enterprises to establish correct values and a sense of responsibility for environmental protection, to voluntarily publicize environmental information, and to enhance the consciousness of energy-saving, and emission reduction, etc. Through policies of land, taxes, etc., we should increase the profits of enterprises for fulfilling social responsibility. We should push forward the deinstitutionalization of non-governmental organizations, build a new-type management system where registration is direct and no department is in charge, as well as guide, support and nurture environmental organizations, which are endowed with more independence and autonomy so as to play a dominant role in allocation of social resources.

Fourthly, we need to improve the joint management mechanism, and supervise and enforce the law across time, space, fields through the whole process. We should follow the natural ecological unity, integrate the supervision power of different fields at different levels, build and dynamically revise or perfect a cooperative restriction and supervision mechanism, a long-term mechanism for institutionalized environmental management, and improve the effectiveness of environmental supervision and administrative enforcement. We should innovate the joint, trans-regional and overlapping enforcement mechanism, and build a regional mechanism linking the protection and restoration of ecological system and the prevention and control of pollution.

We should innovate a cabinet-like joint environmental protection system, build a ministerial accountability system under the leadership of the central government, integrate the functions of National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Land and Resources, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Forestry, State Oceanic Administration, etc. in resources management, pollution control and ecological protection, and ensure overall decision-making and integrated management of ecological civilization development. We should earnestly build and optimize a vertical management system, guarantee the independent economic power and enforcement power of administrative department in charge, and improve the force and efficiency of environmental supervision.

We should build a mechanism of environmental Monitoring and Control, forecast and early warning, emergency response, based on the modern information technology such as mobile internet, internet of things, big data and cloud computing, etc. We should strictly implement the supervision system of the whole process of pollutant emissions, realize the source control and unified supervision of the pollution sources including industrial point sources of pollution, agricultural non-point sources of pollution and mobile traffic sources of pollution, etc. and pollutant media such as air, soil, surface water, underground water and ocean, etc.

Fifthly, we need to improve the legal and policy system, and guarantee environmental equity and ecological civilization according to the law. We should make sure that the Environmental Protection Law is a basic, global and long-acting law, legally guarantee its status and level, and raise it from a general law to a basic law. We should also revise Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution and Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution, accelerate the formulation and enactment of slip laws including law of nature reserves, law of prevention and control of soil pollution, law of nuclear security, etc. In addition, we should legalize the management of environmental administrative agencies and their establishment, fully guarantee the legal status, powers and responsibilities of the competent department and coordinating organizations, and specify the coordinating body, manner, rules, etc.

We should improve the public fiscal system of the environment, raise the percentage of local government taxes, optimize the fiscal expenditure structure, increase the investment in environmental protection such as the transfer payment of special financial funds for environmental protection, green purchasing, etc., and realize the unity of financial power and administrative power of the local government. We should also make sure that the market plays a dominant role in allocation of resources, and build a multiple motivation and restriction mechanism. We should build a marketized mechanism to attract social capital and improve the third-party governance model for environmental pollution. We should deepen the reform of prices and taxes of resource product, establish and improve the system of compensated use of resources, system of ecological compensation, system of transactions of emission permits, system of responsibility for infringement of natural resources rights, and begin to collect resource taxes, environmental taxes, etc. We should carry out compulsory liability insurances against environmental pollution, and build a long-term mechanism of environmental risk sharing in the society. We should build an identification and evaluation mechanism of environmental damage, and improve the system of compensation for environmental damage. We should push forward the environmental public interest litigation, optimize judicial proceedings, reasonably distribute burden of proof, establish the process of administration priority, optimize the connecting mechanism of environmental administrative enforcement and environmental justice, and innovate the mechanism to motivate people to take legal action so as to guarantee environmental fairness and justice.

Note: This article was written by Chuanfeng Han and Minmin Teng from School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, and it originally appeared in Jiefang Daily on the following website https://newspaper.jfdaily.com/jfrb/html/2016-09/23/content_218610.htm