Haze blankets Shanxi province on March 17, 2015. (Photo/China News Service)
Since his appointment in late February, China's new Environmental Protection Minister Chen Jining has stressed the need to curb corruption in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) industry.
In a latest announcement released on March 25, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) required all government-backed EIA institutes either to disassociate themselves from local environmental protection authorities or to pull out of the EIA market by the end of 2016. Employees at institutes to be shut down will have to quit if they wish to continue working as EIA engineers.
Chen vowed to disassociate all eight EIA institutes affiliated with the MEP before the end of 2015.
The announcement came in response to serious violations and corruption in the EIA process revealed by the China's top discipline watchdog during an inspection in late 2014.
The inspection team identified widespread professional negligence, and pointed out that government-backed institutes dominate the EIA market, making it easy for them to trade favors between the government departments associated with the EIA process.
The State Council has stated that except for major energy or construction projects, the EIA will not be a pre-condition of approval, which some experts worried might worsen the environment protection in the country, thepaper.cn reported in December.
Cheng Lifeng, director of the MEP's EIA department, said that only by eliminating administrative obstacles could China develop a healthy, truly market-based EIA industry.
But some environmentalists have expressed doubts as to whether simply forcing government-backed EIA agencies to disassociate from government organs could lead to a healthy market, as rampant violations still exist at every point in the chain.
Widespread violations
Information on disciplinary violations and corruption involving government-backed EIA institutes began emerging many years ago, said Peng Yingdeng, a senior EIA engineer with the Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection under the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
Peng, who has over 30 years' experience in the EIA field, said that most violations occur when EIA institutes help illegal projects gain government approval by fabricating the report or bribing local environmental protection officials in charge of approval.
In one major corruption case that came to light in 2007, the Hangzhou Research Institute of Environmental Protection under the Hangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau offered a 30 percent kickback to officials responsible for the approval of EIA reports in 13 district-level environmental protection departments. The institute allegedly paid 7.4 million yuan in "commissions" in 2005 alone, the Outlook Weekly reported.
