"We cannot just sit for discussions behind closed doors while
the sandstorms have raged outside for more than ten days," Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao said at a national conference on
environmental protection.
"Besides climatic factors it displays the critical environmental
situation we're facing," Wen said of Beijing being enveloped in a
fine yellow dust.
While addressing the conference held over Monday and Tuesday,
Wen said China required to be on high alert to fight back against
worsening environmental pollution and ecological deterioration in
some regions. Protection of the environment had to be given higher
priority in the drive for national modernization.
The major targets on environmental protection during the
recently completed 10th Five-Year Plan (2000-2005) had not been
achieved as scheduled and new problems had emerged, Wen said.
China had set a target of cutting discharges of sulphur dioxide
by 10 percent in 2000-2005. It set the same target for reducing
emissions of carbon monoxide but only succeeded in securing a 2
percent cut, according to the State Environmental Protection
Administration (SEPA).
"Lack of awareness, insufficient planning and a weak legal
framework can be blamed for the severe environmental pollution in
the country," Wen noted.
According to the recently adopted 11th Five-Year Guidelines (2006-2010) energy
consumption in terms of per capita GDP growth should be cut by 20
percent, major pollutants reduced by 10 percent and forest coverage
should increase from the current level of 18.2 percent to 20
percent, he said.
The Premier has set out four priorities for current and future
environmental protection. These include improving water
conservation, controlling atmospheric and soil pollution, enhancing
protection of the national ecology, re-adjusting the economic
structure and boosting the environmental technology and protection
industry.
SEPA reported 45 other pollution incidents in the two and a half
months after the Songhua River spill last November which threatened
the water supplies of four million people in the city of Harbin,
capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
Another incident listed by the administration was a cadmium
spill along the Beijiang River in south China's Guangdong Province that also threatened
drinking and agricultural water supplies.
Other major water pollution incidents included chemical spills
along northeast China's Hun River, central China's Hunan's Xiangjiang River and a diesel spill
along the Yellow River in Henan Province as well as oil contamination of
Ganjiang River in central China's Jiangxi Province.
Wen ordered local governments on Monday to release information
on energy consumption and pollutant emissions every six months, set
plans to control discharges and step up the environmental
assessments of proposed construction projects.
Protective policies on the exploitation of resources should be
put in place and legal and supervisory systems established,
acknowledged Wen. He also urged those in authority to allocate more
money and raise public awareness of environmental protection
issues.
(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2006)