Environmental Agency Management Reforms Under Way

On September 22, the General Office of the CPC and the State Council issued a Guiding Opinion for the Vertical Management System Reform of Environmental Protection Agency under Province Level aiming to address existing challenges such as lack of supervision from local government, local protectionism, and local level cross region coordination among others.

The opinion stresses provincial level environment protection department’s leading role in supervision and management, while withdrawing municipal level and county level environment protection departments role in environment auditing and monitoring. The supervision role could be divided into two parts, supervision of government and supervision of enterprises. The provincial level will perform the supervision of municipal, county and other lower level government’s performance, while municipal and county level performs supervision duties to local enterprises. Currently, 12 provinces have submitted proposals to have pilot reform, which will by finished by the end of June in 2017.

The more centralized approach could potentially lead to more consistent implementation of environment protection rules and regulations and more predictability on law enforcement.