Handwritten newspaper materials on environmental protection

In 2005, an "environmental storm" broke out in the mainland of China, and 30 projects under construction with a total investment exceeding 1 179 billion yuan were stopped by the State Environmental Protection Administration, including three projects of the Three Gorges Corporation, which are also ministerial units. The reason is that these projects have not undergone environmental impact assessment and belong to illegal projects that have not been approved for construction.

Environmental Deterioration There is no turning back for China's environmental problems, which did not start today. As early as 1990s, the problem of environmental pollution was very serious. For example, the Huaihe River Basin. In the 1990s, five types of water quality accounted for 80%, and the whole Huaihe River was like a huge sewage ditch all the year round. 1995, the economic loss caused by environmental pollution reached187.5 billion yuan.

According to the calculation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the losses caused by environmental pollution and ecological destruction have accounted for 15% of the total GDP, which means 9% economic growth on the one hand and 15% loss rate on the other. Environmental problems are not only the problem of China's sustainable development, but also the devil that devours economic achievements.

At present, China's desertified land has reached more than 2.674 million square kilometers; The cultivated land and homes of nearly 400 million people in 47/kloc-0 counties in China 18 provinces and autonomous regions are threatened by desertification to varying degrees, and desertification is still increasing at a rate of more than 10000 square kilometers per year.

Among the seven major water systems, the water quality with no use value has exceeded 40%. More than 400 of the 668 cities in China are short of water. Many of them are caused by water pollution. For example, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province is located at the intersection of Yongjiang River, Yaojiang River and Fenghua River. However, due to water pollution, when the water is most scarce, it is necessary to rely on water tankers to run around the clock to transport the water from rural rivers to various enterprises in the city.

The average industrial added value of China is 6,543,800 yuan, which requires 330 cubic meters of water consumption and produces 230 cubic meters of sewage. Every time a GDP of 654.38 billion yuan is created, 288,000 tons of wastewater will be discharged. There is also a lot of domestic sewage. More than 80% of them will be directly discharged into rivers without treatment, otherwise there will be no water available in China in 10.

The urban population of China13 breathes seriously polluted air, and the land of13 is eroded by acid rain. In economically developed Zhejiang Province, the acid rain coverage rate has reached 100%. The frequency of acid rain is 1 1% in Shanghai and 12% in Jiangsu. In central China and some southern cities, such as Yibin, Huaihua, Shaoxing, Zunyi, Ningbo and Wenzhou, the frequency of acid rain exceeds 90%.

The maximum allowable emission of sulfur dioxide for basically eliminating acid rain pollution in China is120,000 ~140,000 tons. In 2003, the national sulfur dioxide emissions reached 265,438 0.587 million tons, an increase of 65,438 0.02% compared with 2002, of which industrial emissions increased by 65,438 0.04.7%. At the current rate of economic development. As well as the way and intensity of pollution control, by 2020, the sulfur dioxide emitted by thermal power plants alone will reach more than 2 1 10,000 tons, and the total emission will exceed the atmospheric environmental capacity 1 times, which will be a serious disaster to the ecological environment and people's health.

65438127 October, it was predicted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the sudden environmental crisis in human history would probably cause the greatest damage to the economic and social system in the near future if it was not rectified.

There is a saying that pollution control is in a dilemma. In order to improve the environment while developing the economy, the investment in environmental protection must reach more than 0.5% of 65438+GDP. However, this is under the condition that environmental protection is already very good. In China, according to Shanghai's experience, in order to effectively manage the environment, the investment in environmental protection must account for more than 3% of GDP. In the past 20 years, China's annual investment in environmental protection was 0.5% in the first half of 1990s, and only a little more than 1% in recent years. Environmental protection is a kind of "luxury consumption", with large investment and small contribution to GDP. Therefore, some special funds originally used for environmental protection have also been used for other purposes.

At present, China is in a dilemma on environmental issues: without governance, the future cannot be guaranteed; If we really want to manage it, we need large-scale investment, and the immediate economy is unbearable.

It has been calculated that the enterprises around Dianchi Lake in Yunnan Province have only created several billion yuan of output value in the past 20 years, but it takes at least tens of billions of yuan to initially restore the water quality of Dianchi Lake, which is the fiscal revenue of Yunnan Province for one year. Small paper mills in the Huaihe River Basin have a cumulative output value of only 50 billion in 20 years. However, to control the pollution caused by it, even if the main stream reaches the minimum irrigation water standard, it needs to invest 300 billion yuan. It will not only take a terrible number, but also take at least 100 years to restore the three types of water quality in the 1970 s.

From the microscopic point of view, in the past 20 years, domestic manufacturing industry can only tap its potential in two aspects: first, wages, and second, environmental protection, without relying on technological progress to reduce energy consumption and costs. The simplest, such as cement production, needs to increase the 8 yuan cost per ton of cement, accounting for 5% of the ex-factory price of cement. The textile industry discharges more than10 billion cubic meters of wastewater every year. If it is to be treated, it needs 1.2~ 1.8 yuan per ton. Increase the production cost by 5%. And most enterprises simply don't have that high profit rate. Therefore, we can only fight guerrilla warfare on environmental protection issues: either we don't build any wastewater treatment facilities, or we put sewage into the treatment pool during the day and discharge it into the river at night when no one is around, which can save a lot of money. In the disorderly competition in the market, this 5% cost. It often determines the profit and loss, life and death of an enterprise.

The "two highs and one low" in China's environmental law enforcement-high law-abiding cost, high law-enforcement cost and low illegal cost-also contributed to this tendency. Under normal circumstances, the environmental protection department needs 500,000 yuan to collect evidence for an illegal smuggling incident, and the fine that eventually falls on the illegal enterprise is only 50,000 yuan, including the so-called "environmental storm" that is blowing fiercely.

Some mega-power station projects with investment of several billion yuan started construction without authorization in violation of the EIA, and the final fine was only 200,000 yuan. For a project with an investment of over 1 100 million yuan, the fine of 200,000 yuan is only 9 Niu Yi cents. How strong is this punishment for illegal activities? Therefore, the environmental protection law has always been called the "tofu law".

An environmental storm will involve hundreds of thousands of enterprises, which will inevitably lead to bankruptcy of a large number of enterprises, unemployment of a large number of people, a substantial increase in enterprise costs, and the domestic price index will quickly break through double digits. Therefore, both macro and micro costs are actually unbearable.

Four factors hinder the huge resistance of environmental governance to environmental protection departments in the process of law enforcement. Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, summed up four reasons:

First of all, some places don't have a deep understanding of Scientific Outlook on Development and simply pursue economic growth. Some projects with high energy consumption and heavy pollution, such as small smelting, small ferroalloy and small chemical industry, which are explicitly prohibited, have actually shown a spreading trend in some places.

Secondly, in attracting investment, some local governments unilaterally emphasize simplifying examination and approval and handling relevant procedures within a time limit. No matter whether the project will be polluted or not, as long as the investment is approved. In some places, there are illegal phenomena such as "the will of the head" and "getting on the bus first and buying tickets later" in the environmental impact examination and approval of construction projects.

Third, the quality of environmental impact assessment needs to be improved. Some EIA units do not insist on scientific evaluation, dare not speak with objective facts and scientific data, and the evaluation conclusions are vague and ambiguous. They pushed the conclusion of the environmental feasibility of the project to the examination and approval department, and even a few EIA units falsified, fabricated or tampered with data, or concealed facts, which seriously affected the implementation of the environmental impact assessment system, made the environmental impact assessment a mere formality, and lost the minimum scientific and fair nature of third-party consulting institutions.

Finally, information disclosure and public participation are insufficient. China's current environmental impact assessment system is dominated by the government, and it is obviously not enough to supervise a large number of construction projects with limited government power.

In fact, the resistance encountered by EIA is driven by the economic interests behind it.

Set off a real "environmental storm"

China is a big country with little room for manoeuvre in the environment, and it is also a rising country after the global resources and markets are basically divided up. It is impossible for China, like some pioneer countries, to wait until the environment is extremely bad.

However, China is also a developing country, and China is bound to develop its economy first and then control pollution.

The history of all countries in the world shows that there is a similar law between economic growth and environmental change: in the process of industrialization, a country will have a period of rapid growth of environmental pollution with GDP, especially in the era of heavy chemical industry; However, when GDP grows to a certain extent, with the upgrading of industrial structure, residents' willingness to pay for the environment increases. After reaching the turning point, the pollution level will suddenly drop with the growth of GDP until the pollution level returns to below the environmental capacity. This is the so-called environmental Kuznets curve, which was the law of Japan's development in that year.

There is no doubt that it is impossible for China to cross such an era of heavy chemical industry. Because China has a large population and a large country, it is impossible for Finland to directly enter the high-tech era with the help of global division of labor under the condition of underdeveloped manufacturing.

In the late 1990s, the author returned to his hometown in southern Jiangsu. When I was a child, the scene that the river was clear and I could reach four townships and eight towns by boat was gone forever. To my surprise, the main factor causing this situation is the most common domestic garbage. In China, even if the industry is underdeveloped, the pollutants brought by population growth are enough to make the environment worse to an unbearable degree. Even if we want to control such pollution, we need a lot of investment and economic foundation.

China has a long way to go in pollution control, so it needs to act according to law to stop the occurrence of vicious environmental incidents and slow down the pace of environmental deterioration.