China has ordered a dozen heavy industrial plants to shut down for failing to meet pollution standards and told another 70 to comply with the rules. The State Environmental Protection Administration said on its Web site (http://www.sepa.gov.cn) that the plants represented combined investment of 2 billion yuan (US$258 million). They include a metallurgy company in Inner Mongolia, four steel makers in Jiangsu and Hebei and a charcoal plant in Shandong.

"Projects that seriously violate the state's industrial policies and environmental protection thresholds must be immediately and permanently closed down," SEPA vice head Pan Yue was quoted as saying.

The agency has been striving to extend its influence in the face of opposition from local authorities that frequently put growth before the environment.

SEPA said on Monday that China fell short of its goal for 2006 to reduce emissions of pollutants by 2 percent from 2005 levels. China has set a goal of reducing emissions of pollutants by 10 percent between 2006 and 2010. To that end, the government would withhold approval of projects that produce a lot of pollution in those provinces that have failed to meet Beijing 's emission targets, the agency said.

China last year also missed its goal of cutting by 4 percent the amount of energy it uses to generate a unit of output. Sources told Reuters last week that China achieved only a 1.0-1.5 percent reduction in that measure of "energy intensity" in 2006.

China to Hold Provincial Officials Accountable for Environmental Harm
Reprinted from China Environmental News Digest, 20 February 2007.

Starting in 2008, China will expand its recent Regional Permit Restriction to provinces nationwide in an effort to push them to achieve pollution reduction goals, the country’s top environmental authority, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), announced on 12 February.

The regional measure, adopted in January, suspends SEPA approval for all construction projects in regions that fail to achieve certain pollution reduction requirements, including conducting environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and building pollution prevention facilities. Shortly after the measure was instituted, SEPA blacklisted four municipalities and four power giants in the country for violating these rules.

The Regional Permit Restriction is the strictest administrative measure SEPA has taken in its 20-odd year history and was adopted after China failed to meet its overall environmental protection targets last year. SEPA director Zhou Shengxian revealed that the country discharged 25.9 million tons of sulfur dioxide and 14.3 million tons of organic compounds into the nation’s waterways in 2006, a 1.8 percent and 1.2 percent increase over 2005, respectively. Rates of discharge fell last year (by 11.3 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively), but the nation’s annual pollution reduction goals are far from being met, Zhou said.

The major factors to blame, Zhou believes, are the old production modes still existing in China’s economy and the unexpectedly fast GDP growth rate experienced last year. When the nation set its pollution control target of 10 percent reduction for its 11th five-year plan (2006–10), the estimated annual GDP growth was 7.5 percent. Yet the actual figure exceeded the projection by 3.2 percent and increased along with the pollution.

Zhou admits that current Chinese efforts to combat environmental pollution are insufficient. Over the past five years, as much as 47 percent of the investment pledged for this task became empty rhetoric. To make the situation worse, law enforcement and supervision has remained weak.

Zhou is confident that the remaining three years of the 11th five-year plan will see a gradual reduction in pollution.

At the Central Economic Work Conference in late 2006, a three-day annual event to set major economic strategy and policy for the year to come, China ’s top decision makers set a 2 percent pollution reduction target for 2007. Zhou promised that SEPA would use harsh measures to guarantee attainment of this goal.

So far, the Regional Permit Restriction has been far from an empty threat. When one of the four cities blacklisted in January ignored the measure and continued its environmental offenses, SEPA intensified administrative punishment and invited widespread media exposure of the violator. This unusually hard stance for SEPA, which traditionally has been mocked as a “rubber stamp” agency for its weak authority, has astonished many local officials. Once SEPA upgrades the Restriction to the provincial level, officials there will likely suffer politically for their poor environmental records.

SEPA will continue to encourage industrial restructuring this year, with the aim of phasing out old and heavily polluting industrial facilities, production modes, and products, according to Zhou. By the end of 2007, the administration hopes to close all grass pulp production facilities with an annual capacity of less than 34,000 tons, all chemical pulp production lines with an annual capacity of less than 17,000 tons, and all diosgenin facilities (a chemical used to make hormones) with an annual capacity of less than 100 tons. It will also vigorously promote the adoption of advanced clean technologies in those industries.

AELERT to Host Conference in Australia for Environmental Regulators in November 2007

The Australian Environmental Law Enforcement and Regulators Network (AELERT) is a network of environmental regulatory agencies that are responsible for the management of natural resources or the protection of the environment. It aims to build relationships between agencies and jurisdictions to facilitate the sharing of information and to improve the regulatory compliance capacity of member agencies. It also seeks to develop national standards for training and best practice in environmental regulation.

Membership of AELERT is open to agencies with environmental, planning, cultural heritage, or natural resource related responsibilities. Twenty-three federal, state and local government agencies within Australia are currently members of AELERT. Agencies sign a charter which commits them to support each other through co-operation, exchange of information, and operational, training and policy issues.

As an AELERT member, agencies can access nationally accredited training packages (Certificate IV in Statutory Compliance and Certificate IV in Investigations) that have been customized to enhance their practical application to the environmental regulator. Agencies are also able to access a resource library containing examples of case law, prosecution policies, relevant articles, compliance and investigations manuals, and national training calendars via the AELERT website, http://www.aelert.com.au.

AELERT Conferences

AELERT co-ordinates an annual conference to bring together environmental regulators from across Australia and overseas. Guest speakers have included the Chair of Interpol’s Environmental Crimes Committee, Principal Lawyers, Senior Investigators from international environmental regulatory agencies, Judges and Magistrates and numerous state and territory agency representatives.

The conferences provide an opportunity for practitioners within environmental regulatory agencies to discuss and highlight their experiences in regulatory practice, legislative drafting, licensing, policy writing, compliance monitoring, audit and the investigation and enforcement of environmental offences. The most recent conference was co-hosted by the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation, Department of Natural Resources and Sydney Catchment Authority in Sydney in November 2006 and attracted over 250 delegates.

The conference focused on a range of themes, including regulatory practice and theory, wildlife, pollution, native vegetation and water issues. There were a range of domestic and international keynote speakers from the judiciary, industry and environmental regulatory agencies in attendance, including Professor Allan Fels, Dean of the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), Michael Stahl, Director Compliance, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Tony Oposa, International Network for Environmental Compliance & Enforcement (INECE).

The South Australian Government Environment and Primary Industry Portfolios will host the 4th annual AELERT Conference in Adelaide , South Australia . The conference will be held on the 26th, 27th and 28th November 2007 at the Holiday Inn on Hindley Street , Adelaide with the conference dinner to be held at the National Wine Centre of Australia on the evening of the 27th.

AELERT is currently looking for international speakers to attend this year's conference. The theme for the 2007 conference is “Innovative Compliance." Conference Logistics are the conference organisers for AELERT. Information about the conference, including details for submitting presentations, registration and accommodation is available through the Conference Logistics AELERT site.

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this year's conference, please contact John Winkworth, Chair of the AELERT Conference Sub-Committee, on + 61 8 463 7943, or by email at winkworth.john@saugov.sa.gov.au. Alternatively, if you would like general information on the AELERT network, please contact Greg Sullivan, National Committee Secretary, on + 61 3 403 5664, or by email at greg.sullivan@brisbane.qld.gov.au.

Indonesia and the European Commission to Negotiate a Partnership to Curb Illegal Logging Trade

In an effort to curb illegal logging, the Government of Indonesia and the European Commission Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Project have agreed to enter negotiations on a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) to improve enforcement of forest laws in Indonesia.

The effort is an extension of a 2005 Indonesia Presidential Instruction to combat illegal logging and a 2003 EU Action Plan regarding trade links of illegal timber in the EU. Both parties have reached common understanding that the combat against illegal logging and its associated trade is not solely the responsibility of the producer countries, but is also a responsibility of consumer countries.

The parties hope that a VPA will contribute to the promotion of legally harvested and sustainable timber in Indonesia, while helping to ensure broader and better access of Indonesian forest products in the European markets and market competitiveness.

Development of a VPA will require a process for verification of legal timber and chain-of-custody, to be developed through a FLEGT licensing system, among other challenges.

For more information, please visit http://www.eu-flegt.org.