Zhang Bo: Don't be afraid of the "dark side" of environmental protection work丨Don't be confused in 2024

Zhang Bo (Nongjian/Photo)

Whether the water quality is good or not depends on whether the fish can live. It's not just a simple public understanding of environmental protection.

More than a decade ago, Zhang Bo, then director of the Shandong Provincial Environmental Protection Department, demanded that polluting companies build a fish pond at the outfall and ensure that the fish survive. Zhang Bo's idea is simple: ordinary people can't understand water quality indicators such as COD (chemical oxygen demand), and fish is the best indicator.

In 2000, Zhang Bo joined the government from a university and was transferred from the vice president of Qingdao Institute of Architecture and Engineering to the director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Environmental Protection, and in 2016, he joined the central government, successively serving as the director of the Department of Water Environment Management of the former Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the director and chief engineer of the Department of Water Ecology and Environment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Today, the 61-year-old Ph.D. is the president of the China Association for the Research and Promotion of Ecological Civilization, and is still focusing on the difficulties and blockages in key areas.

Shandong Environmental Protection under Zhang Bo's management has always taken the lead. To control smog, the state has issued a local version of the action plan and ranked the prefectures and cities before the state; to control water, the opposite has been done, and the pollution discharge standard is more than four times stricter than that of the whole country; the high-pressure sewage incident has been delayed for a year, and the government affairs microblog has made a high-profile counterattack.

During his tenure at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, many places followed the example of Shandong's experience in water management and tightened standards, but he publicly warned that he would not be encouraged to set excessively high water quality targets to prevent the situation of "individual soldiers, unusually heavy and light" from appearing on the water.

Zhang Bo has always been open-minded, and for more than a decade, he has been interviewed by Southern Weekly many times, not only to the media, but also to the public and even to businesses. A netizen wrote a Weibo post saying that "they (referring to Shandong Environmental Protection Affairs Weibo) dare to make anything public."

"There is no big deal about the 'dark side' of environmental protection, and it can be put on the table. Every time he faces an interview, Zhang Bo is so calm.

It is not difficult to raise fish in inferior class V water

Raising fish in inferior Class V water may sound impractical, but it is not difficult to implement.

The environmental quality standards for surface water in the mainland delineate five types of water according to different functions, and the water with poor water quality is generally inferior to class V - COD is greater than 40 mg/L, but crucian carp and carp, two common fish on the table, can also survive in inferior class V water bodies with COD less than 100 mg/L.

Allowing paper mills to build fish ponds is one of the measures taken to control Nansi Lake. Nansi Lake refers to the four connected lakes of Weishan Lake, Zhaoyang Lake, Dushan Lake and Nanyang Lake, which are not only the largest freshwater lakes in the north, but also the main water transmission line and storage hub of the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, which is related to the safety of drinking water along the route.

Zhang Bo recalled that at the beginning of the 20th century, every county in the basin had at least one paper mill, distillery, fertilizer factory, printing and dyeing factory, chemical factory and other highly polluting enterprises, and the pollutants flowed into the lake through more than 50 rivers to form a "soy sauce lake", not to mention the extinction of fish and shrimp, and some waters did not even grow reeds.

The history of water control is a microcosm of the history of China's environmental protection. The management of the Guanting Reservoir in Beijing began in 1972, when the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, sounding the alarm for global environmental protection, and the following year, the first national environmental protection conference was held, kicking off the mainland's environmental protection work.

Water pollution control spans multiple departments and administrative regions, and the causes are complex and difficult to control. The Huaihe River water pollution incident in 1994, the Songhua River water pollution incident in 2005, the treatment of black and odorous water bodies, and the supervision of water sources...... China's water governance process has gradually changed from passive to active, from water pollution prevention and control to coordinated management and overall promotion of water resources, water environment, water ecology and other river basin elements, and the goal of water control in the 14th Five-Year Plan is precisely to have rivers and water, fish and grass, and harmony between people and water.

Zhang Bo's "Standard for Stable Growth of Common Fish" implements this shift ahead of schedule. This standard is referred to as "606" - COD is 60mg/L, ammonia nitrogen is 6mg/L (the national standard class V water limit is 2mg/L).

This water is still inferior Class V water, but the water ecology is activated. "When common fish grow steadily, the people on both sides of the river are safer. Zhang Bo believes that "if there is water, fish and grass, the beautiful scenes in the memories of the common people will gradually come back." ”

According to the 2022 Communiqué on the State of the Ecological Environment, only 0.7% of the water quality sections in the country are inferior to Class V. But this does not mean that water environment management is about to be completed. Under the rapid process of urbanization, the water ecological space has been seriously plundered.

"Compared with developed countries, China's water environment physical and chemical indicators are similar or equivalent, and the biggest shortcoming may be the serious imbalance of the water ecosystem. Zhang Bo said.

In 2022, the Yangtze River basin suffered a severe drought, and some sections of the river bed even bottomed out, but the water quality of Class II was maintained throughout the year. This shows that point source pollution control has achieved good results, while problems such as non-point source pollution and water ecological imbalance are becoming prominent.

Commercial houses and villas built along the river have squeezed the city's flood channels narrower and narrower, and even covered them with parking lots, and many low-lying areas that were originally wetland lakes have been encroached upon and turned into urban areas. "So it's nature's fault to turn people on their backs after a heavy rain?" Mr. Zhang said.

Fiscal funds are "dispensable"

After the fish farming standard, Shandong's local water environmental quality standards have been further tightened, and many fear that this will kill Shandong's paper industry. "Twenty years ago, unlike now, many people thought that environmental protection was important, but the desire to accelerate development was even more urgent. Zhang Bo recalled.

The contradiction between protection and development seems irreconcilable, but Zhang Bo believes that the industry should not be easily labeled. Once the concept, standards, technology, and management of the enterprise are reborn, the ugly duckling can also become a white swan. "As long as the strategy is used well, environmental protection is not just a conservation effort, but an important tool for economic and social transformation. ”

Eight years after the standards were tightened, the number of papermaking enterprises in Shandong has been sharply reduced from more than 200 to more than a dozen, but the scale of the paper industry is more than three times that of the original, and the profits and taxes are more than four times that of the original. Shandong Minjian paper enterprises are active in the capital market and have innovated a large number of technological achievements.

Zhang Bo recalled that in this process, the local government did not arrange financial subsidies and did not resettle laid-off workers. All the government has done is set standards that are expected to be clear, and ever-tightening are being strengthened. In the words of the enterprise, "the standard follows the ass like a tiger, and if it runs slowly, it will be bitten".

After taking up his post at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Zhang Bo often traveled to various places to conduct research and found that the first demand put forward by many places was to "increase the central government's financial investment". These places rely mainly on government financial support for environmental protection. However, Zhang Bo believes that financial funds are "very important, the more the merrier, and the more dispensable".

"It is very important, the more the merrier" is easy to understand, and the reason for "dispensable" is that if we rely solely on financial funds to do environmental protection, and do not make up our minds to straighten out the price system and supervision mechanism of resources, it is impossible to establish an effective market, and some environmental protection infrastructure will inevitably "bask in the sun" in the end, and there is no fundamental difference between "have" and "no"; and if the government has the effect of stimulating the market, it may not need too much financial funds, and such "nothing" is better than "have".

Environmental protection is not an all-encompassing government that requires the participation of multiple forces.

Zhang Bo is particularly supportive of environmental information disclosure. On the one hand, after the disclosure, the public will help to supervise and reduce the management costs of government departments; on the other hand, "it is not a big deal for the people to say some excessive things during supervision, and once the environment is improved, the people will praise you very much."

In his view, it is very important to grasp the six words "environment, role, and purpose", and if a person or a group can speak and do things in line with their own environment, role and purpose, they will be able to achieve no confusion.

Southern Weekly reporter Lin Fangzhou

Editor-in-charge: Wang Tao