Plan calls for east to help west
- Source: Global Times
- [03:07 May 06 2010]
- Comments
By Deng Jingyin
The eastern part of China may be required to pay environmental protection expenses to the western part of the country because residents in the east have benefited from rapid development, an environmental official said.
The official made the comment as the country's environmental watchdog began drafting a national ecological compensation regulation for natural reserves, mineral resources and rivers in late April.
Lead by the Western Region Department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the regulation will emphasize the eastern region's role in alleviating ecological poverty in western areas, which suffers the most serious grassland degradation and melting glaciers.
Authorities suggested that the western region would get ecological compensation from the eastern area.
Ren Yong, deputy director of the personnel department in the ministry, was quoted as saying by the 21st Century Business Herald that under the regulation, whoever benefits from environmental protection efforts should compensate the protector.
For example, the Sanjiangyuan area, the source of the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers, protects the water that benefits everyone in the nation but hurts the economy in the region. Therefore, the central government should compensate the Sanjiangyuan area.
Jinxiu county in Dayaoshan Nature Reserve of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, which once depended on timber, returned to poverty after they banned logging in 1998. The number of people living in poverty increased to 55,811 in 2003 from 9,844 in 1999, accounting for 37 percent of the total population.
"Whoever destroys the environment should pay," Ren said.
Ren said the national ecological function zones and nature reserves are the priority when it comes to compensation.
The authority has marked 1,458 ecological function zones, covering nearly 22 percent of the country's land area and 11 percent of the population.
But the compensation idea triggered controversy and questions were raised whether the policy is fair.
"The central government lacks a coordinating mechanism. It is hard to establish a compensation system across provinces, rivers or function zones," Xu Ming, an expert specializing in environment protection from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times Wednesday.
According to Xu, emphasizing the obligations of the eastern region is not the best solution since China needs a sustainable and market-oriented mechanism, which takes all situations into consideration to balance uneven development in different regions.
"Quantifying the ecological compensation is still a problem waiting to be solved, not only for China, but for the world," he added.
Ren suggested that an eco-compensation committee should be established to mediate disputes and provide suggestions for a national policy.
Furthermore, the ministry suggested a special fund be created for a national eco-compensation system, to be funded by the central government with help from agriculture, water conservancy and forestry areas.
Zhejiang Province has set an example in ecological compensation, which has set aside about 2.6 billion yuan ($380,821) for ecological compensation.
