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Not long ago, the "Opinions of the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council on Strengthening the Zoning Control of the Ecological Environment" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") was officially released, marking a new stage in the zoning control of China's ecological environment. The implementation of ecological environment zoning control is an important measure to improve the modernization level of ecological environment governance, simply put, it is to carry out sub-regional differentiated and precise control of the ecological environment, such as the establishment of national parks such as Sanjiangyuan is a measure of ecological environment zoning control. If an enterprise wants to choose a site to build a factory, what changes will a place face if it wants to develop its industry? What is the effect of the pilot exploration in various places in the past few years?
The first key word for ecological environment zoning control is "zoning". It is an environmental management system with the goal of ensuring ecological functions and improving environmental quality, and implements sub-regional differentiated and precise control. In layman's terms, it means that different regions have different policies.
Liu Yi, Professor, School of Environment, Tsinghua University: In fact, the emphasis is on adapting measures to local conditions, according to the natural environment endowment and characteristics of different regions, and carrying out targeted ecological and environmental governance, without engaging in one-size-fits-all, which I think is the essence of it.
At present, the construction of ecological civilization on the mainland is still in a critical period of superimposed pressure and heavy burdens, so why should we implement zoning control? How to properly handle the relationship between development and protection? This is precisely the second key word of the "Opinions" -- prevention at the source.
Liu Yi, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Environment: Source prevention is to avoid possible ecological and environmental risks in the future at an early stage, rather than waiting until everything has been done to reduce pollution at the end.
Wan Jun, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment: In the early stage of ecological environmental protection in our country, there were a series of pre-source prevention systems, including environmental impact assessment, but at that time, many of them were passive, and only after the project came to see what impact it had on the environment. Now that the ecological environment is controlled by zoning, after the enterprise comes, it is very clear what the ecological and environmental protection requirements of this place are.
To understand this system, we must also understand the third key word - three lines, which are the red line of ecological protection, the bottom line of environmental quality, and the upper line of resource utilization. Strict adherence to these "three lines" is an important prerequisite for the zoning and control of the ecological environment, but the concept of these "three lines" is not unique to the issuance of the "Opinions", such as the requirement to delineate ecological red lines has existed for many years. Since 2017, the mainland has launched a pilot project of "three lines and one order", that is, on the basis of the "three lines", an "ecological environment access list" is added.
Wan Jun, Vice President of the Academy of Environmental Planning of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment: These pilots and practices in the early stage have accumulated rich experience, including the earliest pilot projects from Jinan and Lianyungang in four cities, and later, in the Yangtze River Economic Belt 11 provinces and cities took the lead in promoting the formulation of "three lines and one order", and then achieved full coverage of the whole country in two batches.
To understand it, we should also pay attention to three key points, namely, the management and control unit of the ecological environment, the access list and the information platform. The control unit is the foundation. At present, the mainland has designated more than 40,000 ecological and environmental management units, which are divided into priority protection, key control and general control units according to different situations.
Liu Yi, Professor, School of Environment, Tsinghua University: The advantage of this is to tell policymakers and corporate investors very clearly where to focus on development, where to avoid and circumvent, and where to focus on protection. For example, drinking water source protection areas, which are very clearly stipulated in the law, so everyone knows that they cannot be developed and built there. However, there are also some areas, such as weak diffusion areas of the atmosphere, such as sensitive areas of biological ecology, which are not clearly defined in the law at present, and of course it is difficult to regulate. By delineating these units, it is clear that these places should also pay special attention, at least to limit development and construction.
Chongqing began to implement ecological environment zoning control in 2020, and the reporter from the big data center of the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment saw that on the big screen, the Chongqing satellite map was covered by red, yellow, and green, and was divided into 818 environmental control units.
Zheng Qiang, Director of the Environmental Impact Assessment Division of the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment: The green marks are priority protection units, which are mainly distributed in the northeast and southeast of Chongqing, and are mainly ecological protection priority areas, involving drinking water sources, nature reserves and ecological protection red lines. The red ones are the key control units, which are mainly used for Chongqing's industrial development and urban development and construction. The yellow area belongs to the general control unit, which reserves space for ecological protection and economic and social development.
After determining the ecological environment control unit, the "Opinions" also require the preparation of an ecological environment access list. That is to say, in a certain type of control unit, what projects are allowed to be built and what projects are to be re-located must be managed according to the list.
Wan Jun, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment: The ecological environment access list was originally scattered in various corresponding systems, such as ecological protection redline areas and nature reserves, which have some prohibitive and restrictive requirements. Now, through a complete set of systems such as the ecological environment zoning control system, the access requirements scattered in various policies, various districts, and various river basins are integrated and systematized, and integrated in one system to achieve refined regional landing.
Yunyang County, Chongqing City, is located on the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, with a 196.45-kilometer river shoreline, and pig breeding has always been a pillar industry of local agricultural development. Although the profits are considerable, the resulting feces, sewage, and harmful gases also cause some pollution to the Yangtze River. After the implementation of ecological environment zoning control, the local government has rectified this phenomenon.
Zhang Chuandong, Chief of the Administrative Examination and Approval Section of the Ecological Environment Bureau of Yunyang County, Chongqing: According to the requirements of ecological environment zoning control, we have scientifically formulated a plan for the division of breeding areas, delineated the forbidden area and suitable area in 827.81 square kilometers near the Yangtze River, and demarcated the suitable area in an area of nearly 2,000 square kilometers.
In the past few years, the local government has closed 400 farms in the forbidden area, and this year it has refused to land 5 large farmers, and 907 pig farms have fallen into the control unit of the street one by one, and put forward green upgrade requirements.
In Yunyang County, a pig farm, under the guidance of the environmental protection department, is undergoing an ecological cycle transformation that combines planting and breeding. After the transformation, the manure in the pigsty is turned into organic fertilizer, and the sewage is fermented and pumped into the orchard by a high-pressure water pump, where it can also be used to irrigate the land.
In addition, there is an important support for comprehensively promoting the zoning and control of the ecological environment, that is, the information platform, that is, to give full play to the power of digitalization. On the one hand, the "Opinions" require all localities to improve online government services and intelligent decision-making functions, and at the same time emphasize that it is necessary to promote information sharing and business collaboration between this system and other business systems.
In 2020, Xiamen took the lead in building the "three lines and one order" ecological environment zoning management and control application system in the country, and opened the query function to the outside world. Behind this system, there is a strong data support.
Zhan Yuan, Director of the Environmental Assessment Division of Xiamen Ecological Environment Bureau, Fujian Province: We have integrated land space, municipal facilities, industrial layout and ecological environment into the system, with a total of 207 vector layers, in which you can view spatial information, sewage pipe network settings, industrial layout planning and other information. At the same time, we have also sorted out more than 100,000 access conditions to form a smart core of zoning control.
With this smart brain, whether it is a government department or an enterprise that wants to attract investment, check it online in advance, and you can quickly understand whether the project is suitable for building here and whether there is a better place to build. A technology company in Xiamen has been expanding its industrial scale in recent years, and a number of new projects have been put into operation. Since the launch of this application system, they have a smart helper when selecting a site for a new project.
Through this system, many matters can be approved online, and the efficiency of work is greatly improved. Nowadays, enterprises can also realize the one-stop handling of environmental impact assessment, pollutant discharge permit, and pollutant discharge right on this information platform. After the application of this system, Xiamen has guided nearly 10,000 projects to optimize the layout or adjust the process, put an end to the implementation of backward projects, reduce ineffective investment by more than 800 million yuan, and further strengthen resource sharing between various departments.
When it comes to words like "ecological red line" and "control", people often think about whether it will restrict economic development, and one of the key tasks proposed in the "Opinions" is to promote high-quality economic and social development, including serving major national strategies, such as implementing the development strategy of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and at the same time, guiding key industries to move to areas with large environmental capacity, strong market demand and good market security conditions for scientific layout and orderly transfer, so as to promote green and low-carbon development.
Wan Jun, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment: Its main requirement is not to restrict, but to identify the areas that need to be protected for priority protection, and to implement differentiated key control for areas that need to be developed and have relatively large risks. This leaves more room for development and provides more effective support for subsequent decision-making.
The key to good policies lies in their implementation. The "Opinions" have innovated in the means of supervision, proposing to "make full use of big data, satellite remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles and other technical means to carry out dynamic monitoring", linking the implementation of ecological environment zoning control with the assessment of leading cadres, and strengthening organizational guarantees from many aspects.
As an institutional innovation, ecological environment zoning control can help formulate more targeted protection and management measures to reduce the risk of environmental pollution and ecological damage through "demarcation lines, boundaries, and inventories". At the same time, it should also better promote the rational use of ecological resources and promote the development of ecological economy. Of course, this is a very complex system engineering, the ecological and environmental problems in different regions are different, and the industrial development needs are also different. According to the "Opinions", all localities will also compile and publish the zoning control plan for the ecological environment within their respective administrative areas at different levels, so that the construction of a beautiful China can be more scientific, accurate and efficient based on details.