Guojia: There is a certain lack of local environmental protection implementation capabilities

□ Guojia, Vice President of the Institute of Government Management, Beijing Normal University

In the China People's Livelihood Development Report, environmental governance has always been the subject of our continuous research. The "China People's Livelihood Development Report" was released in 2011 and lasted until 2015, and the theme of each year is closely related to the environment and ecological governance.

The theme of the 2011 China People's Livelihood Development Report is to discuss how to build environmental and ecological policies and governance systems to achieve our policy goals at the time when the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" is coming to an end and the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" is about to begin.

The 2013 People's Livelihood Report discusses the four major livelihood concerns in the process of urbanization, and the research group specifically defines one of the hidden worries as the weakening of resources and the environment. In 2014, the theme of the People's Livelihood Report was the Chinese Dream of People's Livelihood, and the environment and ecology were also taken as an important part of the Chinese Dream.

The people's livelihood report just released this year regards environmental governance as an important theme, especially trying to discuss how to improve the environmental ecology from the perspective of the rule of law. This year, the research group paid special attention to the new Environmental Protection Law, and mainly sorted out the Environmental Protection Law from the perspective of government governance.

Since its promulgation and implementation on January 1, 2015, the new Environmental Protection Law has had very distinctive characteristics, and in the legislative process, it has also reflected the characteristics of being more open and scientific than various legislative decisions in the past.

Judging from the entire legislative process, in just 3 years, it has undergone four revisions of the review, and in the whole process, it has also been open to the public for comments twice.

In the process of soliciting opinions, many experts and scholars put forward their own views in the revision. As a government function, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has also put forward opinions on the law, which is rare in previous legislation. Therefore, the new Environmental Protection Law reflects more scientific legislation from the perspective of legislation.

The new Environmental Protection Law has many bright spots and innovative points, which can be summarized from two aspects.

The first is the governance of ordinary people in the main body of environmental ecology, which includes daily fines, including the seizure of the property of some polluters, and even in more serious cases, there will be administrative detention or judicial measures.

The second is the role of the government. During the revision of the Environmental Protection Law, the law also has special provisions for the government, including for local governments and corresponding environmental protection departments. In the whole process of policy implementation, if there are some improper behaviors in the whole policy implementation process, they must also be investigated, such as 8 kinds of legal designs that induce resignation.

From a legislative point of view, the new Environmental Protection Law has made great progress compared with previous laws. According to data released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, as of July this year, the total number of fines imposed on a daily basis nationwide reached 280 million yuan. The authenticity and reliability of this figure remains to be examined, but it at least shows that the new Environmental Protection Law is not a law that has not been enforced.

The new Environmental Protection Law has been in place for nearly a year, with both effectiveness and shortcomings, but the prospects are optimistic. It is worth mentioning that although the new Environmental Protection Law gives more power to the environmental protection department, it also gives them greater responsibility and pressure. From the perspective of implementation, at present, some local governments or environmental protection departments still have a certain lack of implementation capacity.

(The reporter of this magazine, Chang Wanjie, sorted out according to the recording)