China faces acute environmental and resource strains that threaten to choke growth unless the world’s second-biggest economy cleans up, the nation’s environment minister said in an unusually blunt warning.
In an essay published yesterday, Minister of Environmental Protection Zhou Shengxian (周生賢) also said his agency wants to make assessing projected greenhouse gas emissions a part of evaluating proposed development projects.
That could give the Ministry of Environmental Protection more sway in climate change issues, an area dominated by agencies whose main interest is shoring up industrial growth.
Zhou set environmental worries at the heart of China’s next phase of economic development — a theme in focus at the country’s annual National People’s Congress session starting on Saturday.
“In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humanity and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” Zhou said in the essay published in the China Environment News, his ministry’s official newspaper.
“The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the deterioration of the environment have become serious bottlenecks constraining economic and social development,” he said.
“This is a crucial time for deciding policy, so he’s trying to bring more urgency to getting more teeth for his ministry by making people grasp the huge challenges,” said Yang Ailun (楊愛倫), the head of climate and energy for Greenpeace China, speaking of Zhou’s essay.
Zhou said prospects for growth could be threatened unless smoggy skies, polluted rivers and reckless exploitation of mine reserves are taken much more seriously in setting policy.
“If we are numb and apathetic in the face of the acute conflict between humankind and nature, and environmental management remains stuck in the old rut with no efforts in environmental technology, there will surely be a painful price to pay, and even irrecoverable losses,” Zhou said.
To counter such threats, he proposed strengthening his ministry’s ability to monitor and curb pollution, including taking a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions.
China’s greenhouse gas and climate change policy are dominated by the National Development and Reform Commission, which is also responsible for industrial growth.
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