The lingering smog that has blanketed Beijing since early December has triggered the red alert twice in the month and also raised concerns in the minds of the city's people, who have bought out name brand air purifiers on e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Amazon, and bought one sixth of China's surgical masks, according to a Xinhua report.
China has long raised the issue of environmental protection to national importance, reflected in the central government's repeated urge for green development and its commitment to emissions reduction in the yearly UN Climate Change Conferences.
Although environmental deterioration is a chronic issue that requires constant treatment, applying such remedies in a timely manner would hasten the desired effects. In the very least, it would counteract the worsening trend. A change in production models and lifestyle can also make a difference.
Such is the message delivered at the first "Guard the Blue Sky and Clear Water Summit," held Sunday by the All-China Environment Federation (ACEF), a national society affiliated with the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The summit is aimed at raising the nation's awareness by inviting business leaders to meet with academic experts in order to facilitate the transformation of cutting-edge lab technology to production line efficiency.
The ACEF's Honorable Chairman Gu Xiulian said in her keynote speech that the country's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), which is to be adopted in the annual legislative and political advisory sessions in March of next year, is focused on the "ecological civilization."
"The ecological civilization should run through the future development. We should thoroughly overturn the old mindset characterized by a high growth rate and an increase in quantity, abandon the energy intensive and low efficient production models and lifestyle, and accelerate our nation's reorientation to a green economy," said Gu, who was the vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the 10th NPC.
In terms of actual implementation, Sun Honglie, former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said the current bottleneck lies in the unfairness in implementing environmental protection policies and regulations, instead of the sound policies and regulations themselves, which China promulgated long ago.
"It seems like good, obedient students are likely to be left at a disadvantage," said Dr. Sun, "factories that don't treat their own pollutants go unpunished, and those who do fail to get the reward." He lauded the newly adopted vertical management of environmental protection agencies below the provincial level, noting the independence would give environmental protection law enforcement branch more liberty and less concerns when busting manufacturers who fail to comply with the regulations.
According to him, industrial parks across the country are responsible for 88 percent of the sulfa dioxide and 67 percent of nitrogen oxides, in which a gross 40 percent reduction on the emissions would be highly feasible. In so doing, lab technology would play a role to help manufactures, and that would mean business opportunities and a win-win solution.
