Air pollution is getting worse in China. (Photo : Getty Images)
China's central government released guidelines for effective environmental management. The guidelines are for a pilot program on performance evaluation of government officials.
The guideline was released by the general offices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council and aims to push for further efforts to conserve the environment.
According to Gretchen Daily, a biologist at Stanford University, "China has gone further than any other country, as strange as that sounds given all the devastation that we read about on the environment front there."
She added, "In the face of deepening the environmental crisis, China has become very ambitious and innovative in its new conservation science and policies and has implemented them on a breathtaking scale."
The new policy of the government will require city-level environmental bodies to be governed by the provincial government.
Supervision will be done by the provincial agencies which will send inspectors to cities and counties. Evaluation of the local environmental quality and ensuring its protection will also be done at the provincial level, according to the guideline.
It also has the power to explore ways of setting up agencies to handle environmental affairs on river basins and regions.
The efforts of the Chinese government to protect the environment required major budget considerations and big cash outlay.
"Such investments can have big payoffs," said Steve Polasky, Fesler-Lampert Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics at the University of Minnesota.
He added that moves of the government such as "restoring forests and grasslands can reduce flooding and sandstorms, which has large benefits for the people downstream and downwind."
In the latest effort to localize environmental management, the provincial agencies are expected to layout plans by 2018. The government's target is to have a highly effective system by 2020.
