According to the reform plan of the Chinese governmental branches under the State Council which was submitted to the 1st conference of the 13th National People’s Congress on Mar 13th, 2018, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) would be disbanded and replaced by a new ministry called the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE).
This is not the first time that Chinese environmental protection authority has been changed in recent times. The first separate environmental protection authority in Chinese central government was the Environmental Protection Bureau established in Jul 1988. The Bureau was set up at the vice-ministry level and lasted for 10 year. In 1998, the Bureau was upgraded to the State Administration of Environmental Protection at the ministry level. After another 10 years, the State Administration of Environmental Protection was upgraded again to the Ministry of Environmental Protection as we now know it. MEP was still a governmental branch at the ministry level. But the progress was that MEP became a State Council branch, which was a little higher above the State Administration of Environmental Protection.
Once the latest restructuring plans are realized, MEE will still be a branch at the ministry level but with more responsibilities. As the new name of the ministry indicates, MEE will cover the management and regulation of all environmental and ecological issues.
In the current environmental protection framework, a lot of governmental branches other than MEP are involved. Take waste water management for example, the Ministry of Land and Resources is responsible for the protection of underground water, the MEP manages the rivers and lakes, the emission outlets are regulated by the Ministry of Water Resources, the pollution caused by agricultural activities is regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the State Oceanic Administration is responsible for the oceanic environment. This excessive division of labor and decentralization of authority has been a source of much confusion for both industry and authorities. Centralization of authority and of regulatory responsibility into the hands of a single authority will reduce bureaucratic red tape, reduce overall redundancy and likely allow more effective regulation of China’s ecosystem.
In China’s great change is sometimes foreshadowed by seemingly innocuous changes in terminology or the name of a regulation or government announcement. The “Ecological Environmental Protection Program for 13th Five Years Plan” published in late 2016 by the State Council is a good example of this. In the past the program was always named using very specific terminology involving the word “Environment” i.e. “Environmental Protection Program” (for example, the program for 12th five years plan) instead of “Ecological Environmental Protection Program”. The subtle change to the word “ecology” in the 13th Five year plan provided a clue to government’s intentions to streamline regulation of China’s ecosystem. So it is reasonable to believe that the duties of the new MEE and the future policy trends have already been written in the Program.
In terms of the chemical industry the most important points are the risk control guidelines in Chapter 6 including 3 major tasks:
Assess the environment and health risks of the existing chemicals and publish the Catalogue of Priority Chemicals by the end of 2017 (already published in Dec 2017).
Phase out the chemicals in Stockholm Convention by 2020.
Control the pollution caused by Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs).
Another compliance duty of chemical enterprises managed by MEP is the new chemicals notification under the MEP Order 7. The revised data requirements for the notification were published last year and the amendments to the Order itself are still under preparation. It is expected that the new regulations on new chemicals notification will appear as an MEE order.
