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On January 10, 2022, Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) issued the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for Construction of Integrated Administrative Law Enforcement Teams for Ecological and Environmental Protection (hereinafter referred to as ‘Construction Plan’), which is the support document in the nationwide battle to prevent and control pollution. The Construction Plan is formulated with a general goal of greatly improving the efficiency of environmental law enforcement by 2025.
China has made remarkable achievements in promoting the implementation of environmental laws and regulations during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020): a total of 833,000 environmental administrative penalty cases were handled nationwide, with a fine of 53.61 billion yuan. Compared with the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2010-2015), the increase is 1.4 times and 3.1 times respectively. However, in terms of law enforcement, a lot of problems revealed, especially in the methods, mechanisms and the team construction.
In order to build an integrated administrative law enforcement team with specialized agencies and staff, modernized equipment, and institutionalized management, the Construction Plan outlines some major tasks. They are listed as follows:
Promote the promulgation of relevant policies and regulations, and further clarify the responsibilities and mechanisms of law enforcement agencies;
Carry out pilot projects on standardizing law enforcement agencies. By 2025, a batch of pilot agencies in cities and counties will be identified;
Integrate 366 monitoring centers of the MEE at national, provincial, and municipal levels to support the law enforcement at national level, and to guide the local supervision and law enforcement of key pollution sources;
Require key pollution units to install automatic monitoring equipment for particular pollutants, such as VOCs, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, and heavy metals;
Incorporate law enforcement of pollution discharge matters specified in the certificate of pollution discharge permit into the "Dual Random & One Public" supervision system;
Strengthen the qualification management of administrative law enforcement personnel and professional training;
Promote the application of new technologies and new equipment in law enforcement, including satellite remote sensing technology, video surveillance technology, drones, unmanned boats and travelling vehicles, etc., to further expand the means of inspections;
Establish and optimize the system of law enforcement information transfer and communication among the MEE and other competent departments of natural resources, agriculture and rural areas, water conservancy, etc;
Accelerate the integration of the following systems and platforms, including the monitoring system of environmental management information of the MEE, the automatic monitoring system of key pollution sources, etc. to establish a unified platform to display information on law enforcement for ecological and environmental protection.
The whole official document can be accessed here.
