Necessary to plug environmental impact assessment holes

ENVIRONMENTAL impact assessments are the first line of defense to curb environmental pollution, and public participation is a key part of the EIA system. It is an important measure to protect the public’s right to know and supervise the environment. If the public participation is not “real”, the environmental impact assessment will be compromised. Beijing News comments:

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment recently issued Measures for Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessments, which puts forward clearer requirements for the scope, form, disclosure content and supervision of public participation in an environmental impact assessment.

The previous regulation was issued in 2006 by the then General Administration on Environmental Protection. It vowed to protect the public’s right to participate in environmental impact evaluations, but without any providing details. In practice, that left many loopholes that could be exploited.

Twelve years have passed, and the environmental authorities have finally decided to set out detailed requirements for environmental impact assessments. For example, it clearly requires companies and local authorities to solicit public opinions via the internet, newspapers, and posters, and the time length must be no shorter than 10 days. The loophole of fabricating public opinion forms is filled.

The new guiding document also requires construction companies to hold public hearings if the public has clear concerns about the environmental impact of a project.

The executives of any company that fabricates data or fakes public opinions will be held answerable for their misdeeds, and its leader will be blacklisted on the environmental credit system and made transparent to the society.

The public has an important role to play in environmental protection. The new measures have taken a big step forward in making public participation more comprehensive and in-depth and transparent. Good policies need to be strictly enforced. It is to be hoped that the measures can be effectively implemented, so that there will be no more “adulterated” public participation in environmental impact assessments.