There are a total of 11,368 EIA engineers in China as of March 22. Among the 507 EIA engineers in Henan Province, 178 of them reportedly have ties with government-backed institutions, according to China Central Television.
"The EIA is the source and starting point for environmental protection. Approval of the EIA report is the key step in the EIA process and also where corruption is most likely to occur," said Chang Jiwen, vice director of the Research Institute of Resources and Environment Policies under the Development Research Center of the State Council.
However, experts said that non-governmental EIA agencies are not immune to corruption and violation.
"Corruption is worse in non-governmental EIA agencies, as the costs for breaking the rules are low," Peng said, adding those agencies have more flexibility in faking their financial records.
Some non-governmental EIA agencies also brag about their "good relations" with environmental protection authorities in their online advertisements. One such EIA agency employee surnamed Mo told the Global Times reporter posing as a potential client that his nine years of working in the industry in Beijing have helped him build good connections with government officials.
"I could get the EIA report approved for around 100,000 to 150,000 yuan even if your project has some problems," Mo said.
The MEP punished 63 EIA agencies and 22 assessment engineers for violations in early March. The agencies either had their licenses revoked or were ordered to fix the problems that led to the violations.
A total of 159 agencies and 169 engineers in China have been disciplined over the past two years for violations that threatened environmental safety, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Far from enough
"Barring government-backed agencies from conducting EIAs could provide fairness and justice for the EIA industry, but it's not enough to establish a healthy market," Peng said.
At least a third of about 1,200 China's EIA agencies are affiliated with the government, Peng said.
"Very few of their employees would like to keep doing assessments after the quit, based on the circumstances at my institute, which means that the EIA industry will lose lots of experienced engineers."
A fundamental reason for the corruption in the industry is because the EIA mechanism is not transparent, and public supervision is largely absent, Peng said.
Although guidelines for the publication of EIA report issued by the MEP in 2013 asked all companies and related environmental protection authorities to publish the full text of the EIA report and the approval decision, in practice, many published reports are stripped down, said Xie Xinyuan, a research fellow from Beijing-based NGO Green Beagle.
In one case Xie is working on, a company building an incinerator told residents they could only see a shortened version of the EIA report at a designated place, with no photocopying or picture taking allowed.
But after negotiations with the company, Xie said, the full report was finally published on the its website. "No matter whether the agencies are government-backed or not, the current EIA [process] has shifted to helping companies get their EIA report approved by the government."
The public cannot be left in the dark about the EIA process and oversight, experts said. "The EIA should be conducted by a third party that consists of EIA engineers, residents' representatives as well as NGOs, to ensure the authenticity of the report, and the relevant departments should organize public hearings once the report has been approved," Xie said.
