Reuters AlertNet Lite - China environment official wants action by citizens

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China environment official wants action by citizens

25 Apr 2007 11:47:19 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, April 25 (Reuters) - A top Chinese environmental official said on Wednesday that greater citizen involvement was needed to rein in the country's powerful polluters as he announced new transparency rules.

Three decades of breakneck industrial growth have fouled China's air, water and soil, and Premier Wen Jiabao made reducing pollution a centrepiece of government policy in 2007.

But vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), Pan Yue, said a broader political shift was needed to give citizens a bigger say in reining in big polluters, who are often protected by growth-hungry officials.

"Reducing pollution emissions is not purely a specialised problem," he said in a statement on SEPA's Web site (www.sepa.gov.cn).

"It's a problem of adjusting the pattern of interests formed through the traditional pattern of growth."

Pan, who has nurtured an image as a political reformer using environmental issues to push change, said the transparency rules would encourage citizens to keep a close watch on polluters.

"Relying on the force of environmental protection and a few other agencies is far from enough; we need broad public participation, because the public are the biggest stakeholders in the environment."

China unveiled rules on Tuesday promising to expose its secretive government to greater transparency and empowering citizens to demand official information in an effort to fight graft and misrule -- but within strict limits.

SEPA became the first government agency to announce its own detailed rules to enforce the new Regulations on Open Government Information. Both sets of rules take effect from May 2008.

The environmental transparency rules demand that officials disclose information about air and water quality, pollution spills, and the names and misdeeds of violators.

Pan said changes were needed because increasingly frequent pollution spills have become a source of social unrest. "Environmental problems have become one of the major factors triggering social conflicts," he said.

China aims to cut emissions of major industrial pollutants by 10 percent between 2006 and 2010, but last year the figures actually increased moderately.

Reports that China is on course to become the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases this year or next are "utter nonsense", a top Chinese climate change official was quoted by a newspaper as saying.

The International Energy Agency said last week China would overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide either this year or next, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

Gao Guangsheng, head of China's Office of the National Coordination Committee for Climate Change, said the claim did not have a concrete statistical basis.

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Last updated:Wed Apr 25 11:49:36 2007