Environmental Chemistry

Author: Shao Min et al.
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-03-01
Features: Over the past two decades, under the attention and leadership of the Party and the state, China's environmental protection efforts have 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 tightest integration of environmental protection and economic development, and the period with the fastest growth in environmental protection. It was precisely because the Party committees and governments at all levels made environmental protection a fundamental policy and implemented it in all development processes, accelerated industrial restructuring, increased environmental protection investment, and strengthened environmental law enforcement that the trend of deteriorating environmental pollution was basically controlled, and the environmental quality in some regions and cities began to improve. It was precisely because industrial enterprises 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 were widely and deeply revealed, exposing environmentally harmful practices, promoting the resolution of environmental issues, and raising public environmental awareness. At the same time, as people increasingly use legal means to safeguard their own environmental rights and interests, the masses are also more and more actively participating in environmental protection and improvement activities, laying an extremely important social foundation for the in-depth development of environmental protection. However, it must be admitted that public environmental awareness in China is still not high enough. The phenomenon of pursuing temporary, one-sided development without considering environmental carrying capacity still exists; in some places, polluting a river or destroying the land for short-term corporate interests is still relatively common. General Secretary Jiang Zemin once clearly pointed out that the level of environmental awareness and environmental quality are important indicators of a nation's and ethnic group's civilized development. In the next decade, China will achieve the third strategic goal, and the national economy will still maintain a relatively fast growth rate, while the population will continue to grow. 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.