Gratifying changes in China’s environment coexist with severe situation.

June 5th is World Environment Day. What’s the environmental situation in China? How has environmental protection made progress? What role does environmental protection play in optimizing economic growth? ….. These are what people want to know most on this special day.

According to the 2014 Bulletin on the State of the Environment in China notified by the Ministry of Environmental Protection to the media on the 4th, in 2014, with the great attention of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, positive progress was made in the construction of ecological civilization and the reform in the field of ecological environment, and new steps were taken in the prevention and control of air, water and soil pollution. However, the environmental situation in China is still grim, and it still faces many difficulties and challenges.

The data is mixed.

China State of the Environment Bulletin 2014 shows the positive changes in China’s environmental situation and environmental protection progress, and also reflects the problems existing in China’s environment and environmental protection.

Compared with the last year’s bulletin on the state of the environment, in the first phase of 2013, only 4.1% of the 74 cities monitored by the new standards met the standard. According to the Bulletin, among the 161 cities that monitored the new air quality standards nationwide in 2014, the annual average air quality in 16 cities reached the standard, and the air quality in 145 cities exceeded the standard.

The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, combined with the data, said that since the implementation of the "Atmosphere Ten" one year ago, the air quality of 74 key cities has generally improved, the proportion of cities that have reached the standard and the number of days that have reached the standard have increased, and the concentration of major pollutants has decreased. The average annual concentration of PM2.5 in 74 cities that implemented the new air quality standards decreased by 11.1%, among which the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region and the Pearl River Delta region decreased by 12.3%, 10.4% and 10.6% respectively.

The gratifying changes in atmospheric governance are enough to show that actions in environmental governance will achieve results.

But at the same time, more data makes us must remain highly vigilant-

According to the Bulletin, the water quality of 968 state-controlled surface water monitoring sections (points) in 423 major rivers and 62 key lakes (reservoirs) in China has been monitored, and the water quality sections of I, II, III, IV, V and worse than V account for 3.4%, 30.4%, 29.3%, 20.9% and 6.8% respectively. As far as surface water is concerned, the proportion of seriously polluted inferior V water bodies is still worrying.

Among 4,896 groundwater monitoring points, the proportion of monitoring points with excellent water quality is 10.8%, that with good water quality is 25.9%, that with good water quality is 1.8%, that with poor water quality is 45.4%, and that with very poor water quality is 16.1%. The current situation that the water quality is poor and extremely poor exceeds 60% shows that China is facing unprecedented water pollution pressure.

According to the Bulletin, in 2013, the national ecological environment quality was generally "average". Among the 2461 counties, there are 558, 1051, 641, 196 and 15 excellent, good, average, poor and poor counties respectively. Counties with "excellent" and "good" ecological environment quality account for 46.7% of the land area, "average" counties account for 23.0%, and "poor" and "poor" counties account for 30.3%.

By the end of 2013, there were 646,168,400 hectares of agricultural land in China, with a net increase of 0.49 million hectares during the year. The total area of soil erosion in China is 2,949,100 square kilometers, accounting for 31.12% of the total area of the census …

Chen Jining, Minister of Environmental Protection, said that in recent years, China’s pollution control process has been accelerated and made positive progress, but the emissions of some major pollutants are still at a high level, and there is a big gap between environmental quality and the needs and expectations of the public. It is bound to be a long-term process to fundamentally improve China’s environmental quality. This requires us not only to have the determination and positive actions to fight a tough battle, but also to be prepared to fight a protracted war and move towards the goal step by step.

Use hard measures to accomplish hard tasks

From September 12th, 2013, when the "starting gun" sounded for haze control, the state announced the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan-"Ten Articles of Atmosphere", to the recent Water Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan-"Ten Articles of Water", and then to the Soil Environmental Protection and Pollution Control Action Plan-"Ten Articles of Soil", which is being worked out quickly, and the hard tasks were completed by hard measures.

In 2014, we gained experience and built up people’s confidence in pollution control.

In this year, more than 7 million yellow-label vehicles and old cars and more than 50,000 small coal-fired boilers were eliminated nationwide by controlling vehicles, coal, desulfurization and dust removal. 190 million kilowatts of coal-fired units have completed the transformation of desulfurization and dust removal, and 11,000 square meters of steel sintering machines have installed flue gas desulfurization facilities, and many large chimneys no longer emit black and yellow smoke.

This year, the central government allocated 10 billion yuan of special funds to prevent and control air pollution; Arrange special funds for environmental protection of 240 million yuan.

This year, I found the "culprit" of smog in 9 major cities such as Beijing. Motor vehicles, industrial production, coal burning and dust are the main sources of PM2.5 pollution in most cities, accounting for about 85% to 90%. The primary source of pollution in Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen is motor vehicles.

This year, environmental protection and public security jointly enforced the law, and the environmental protection department transferred 2,180 suspected criminal cases to the public security organs, three times more than in 2013.

This year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection interviewed the heads of more than 10 cities such as Hengyang, Anyang and Kunming, which failed to cure haze, and urged local governments to take on key responsibilities.

"We should do a good job in the prevention and control of water pollution as we do in the prevention and control of air pollution, and implement the road map of’ Water Ten’ as a construction drawing." Chen Jining said at the symposium on water pollution prevention and control held on May 28th.

"Water pollution control is much more difficult than air pollution control, especially lake pollution control, which generally takes decades or even hundreds of years." Gao Jixi, director of the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said that compared with air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution have greater environmental impact and ecological damage. It takes a long time to win the tough battle of water pollution control, and it will take a long time.

"Under the background of the new economic normal, environmental protection work should be set in a good position." Chen Jining said that the downward pressure on the economy has brought new challenges to environmental protection. This requires us to closely focus on promoting stable and healthy economic development, balance and handle the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, grasp the key points, methods and intensity of environmental protection work, and find a good combination point, focus point and breakthrough point. We must not only keep the red line of ecological protection, total industrial emissions and environmental access standards, but also use environmental protection to promote economic transformation and upgrading, and strive to achieve coordination and win-win between the two. (Reporter Cao Hongyan)