Environmental Engineering

Author: Zhou Lu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-03-01
Features: Over the past two decades, under the emphasis and leadership of the Party and the state, China's environmental protection work has grown from small to large, from weak to strong, achieving significant progress. At the same time, public environmental awareness has also greatly improved. The five years just passed were the period with the largest increase in public environmental awareness, the period with the closest integration of environmental protection and economic development, and the period with the fastest growth in environmental protection. It is precisely because the Party committees and governments at all levels have implemented environmental protection as a fundamental policy in all development processes, accelerated industrial restructuring, increased environmental protection investment, and strengthened environmental law enforcement that the trend of deteriorating environmental pollution has been basically controlled, and the environmental quality in some regions and cities has begun to improve. It is precisely because industrial enterprises have continuously innovated, adopted clean production technologies, phased out backward equipment and processes, and strengthened pollution control that the total emissions of pollutants across the country have been widely and deeply revealed, exposing environmentally harmful practices, promoting the resolution of environmental issues, and raising public environmental awareness. At the same time as consciously using legal weapons to safeguard their own environmental rights and interests, the general public has increasingly participated in activities to protect and improve the environment, laying an extremely important social foundation for the in-depth development of environmental protection. However, it must be admitted that the current level of public environmental awareness in China is not yet high. The phenomenon of pursuing temporary, one-sided development without considering environmental carrying capacity still exists; and the practice of polluting a river or destroying land for short-term corporate interests remains relatively common in some areas. General Secretary Jiang Zemin once explicitly pointed out that the level of environmental awareness and environmental quality are important indicators of a nation's and ethnic group's level of civilization. In the next decade, China will achieve the third strategic goal, and the national economy will continue to maintain a relatively rapid growth rate, while the population will continue to increase. The ecological environment will face tremendous pressure. Only by quickly improving public environmental awareness and forming a situation where the whole society cares about and participates in environmental protection can China's ecological environment be more effectively protected, environmental quality continuously improved, and the vision of a bluer sky, greener earth, cleaner water, and more beautiful mountains and rivers be permanently realized in the Chinese land.