For a developing country like China that is pressing ahead with its industrialization drive, environmental protection is not just about closing down heavily polluting factories.
To strike a balance between environmental protection and economic growth, it is essential to drive home the concept of "green growth" - environmentally sustainable economic growth - to decision-makers nationwide.
Recent public outcries over a paper plant in south China's Hainan Province, as well as a dredging project in the ruins of Yuanmingyuan Park (the Old Summer Palace) in Beijing, all highlight growing environmental awareness across the country.
Unlike industries with smoke stacks or polluting emissions, the two new cases are less obvious targets for the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the country's top environmental watchdog.
The paper plant in Hainan Province, a multi-billion-yuan project funded by the Indonesian paper making giant, Sinar Mas Group-APP, is a golden opportunity that local officials have long been dreaming of.
However, to meet its need for a huge amount of timber, local people are being urged to plant eucalyptus trees to prevent mass logging of roadside trees. The potential impact of the eucalyptus, a non-native tree, on the local ecosystem is worrying many environmental campaigners.
The Beijing case may appear trivial in terms of the amount of money involved. But its historical significance in reminding the Chinese of the humiliation the country suffered when foreign armies destroyed the park in the 19th century makes it a topic for general concern.
The park administration has laid a layer of plastic film at the bottom of some of its many lakes to prevent water from oozing out. But some environmental experts believe it will disturb the water's natural flow and so result in environmental deterioration.
It is not that decision-makers in the two cases are blind to the country's determination to improve the environment.
The Hainan decision to introduce a project that combines tree planting and pulp and paper-making, and the Beijing park manager's attempts to improve the site are in line with the spirit of environmental protection.
Yet, in the absence of environmental assessments, as the law stipulated, the two decisions show how easily the rich natural environment can be damaged. This is particularly a problem in Hainan Province, the country's top ecological tourist resort.
The Beijing decision could worsen the already fragile environmental conditions in the city, the country's capital.
Early this year, SEPA suspended 30 key construction projects in 13 provinces and municipalities for their failing to get an approval for their environmental impact assessment reports. This was an encouraging sign, and shows that the country's top environmental watchdog is showing its teeth to law-breakers.
Given the complexity of environment-related problems, it is understandably hard for the top watchdog to spot and respond to them quickly.
So the public has a big role to play in helping to scrutinize all possible problems.
Now, officials from the State Forestry Bureau have stepped in to look into the Hainan case. No matter what the investigations discover, the endeavors all environmentally-friendly people have made have been rewarded by calling our society's attention to such cases.
(China Daily March 31, 2005)
