Dual approach can clean up smog-stricken areas

Passengers head home at a railway station in Xi'an on a smoggy day, Jan 17, 2017. [Photo/IC]

South China Sea's Guanxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was recently praised by the Ministry of Environmental Protection for managing to keep pollution at satisfactory levels during the past three years. Beijing News commented on Tuesday:

Guangxi's success is indeed praiseworthy, especially as six cities in North China's Hebei province, Central China's Henan province and East China's Shandong province have just been named and shamed for failing to curb air pollution.

The autonomous region, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, has been open to technological innovations such as using drones and satellites to locate pollution, while urging local police to hold polluters accountable as fast as possible.

Such efforts have paid off, making Guangxi a rare environment friendly example among less-developed areas, many of which tend to put GDP growth before environmental protection.

But it should be borne in mind that Guangxi's environmental protection officials were only given credit for doing their job, and it is their counterparts in other provinces and regions that have failed in their duties.

For some reason, it is no longer news that local governments are criticized for being too "soft" on enterprises that discharge excessive pollutants. Their struggle to deal with massive emissions violations by polluting companies has something to do with the fact that many heavy polluters remain a staple of local growth.

The revised Environmental Protection Law should be a cure to the soft enforcement, but there is still a long way to go to implement it. Charging polluting enterprises on a daily basis and shutting down those that disobey the law are measures yet to be effectively carried out across the country. The reason is self-evident.

The weak enforcement of the environmental protection regulations explains why Chen Jining, the minister of environmental protection, stressed the need to strengthen inspections of governments so as to prompt them to fulfill their duties.

He has also urged the shutdown of small yet highly polluting companies, which consume large amounts of coal and discharge much pollution. Hopefully this "dual approach" will help to clean up the smog-stricken areas.