Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Three newly added indicators:
(1) Carbon intensity: the restrictive indicators of the 12th Five-Year Plan
include carbon intensity in order to fulfill China's international promise,
which is that China's carbon intensity by 2020 should be reduced by
40-45 % compared to 2005.
(2) Ammonia Reduction: adding ammonia reduction is for relieving water
eutrophication.
(3) Nitrogen oxide: control of nitrogen oxide is for relieving pollution from coal
and automobile gas.
2. Change of the Environmental Improvement Method: preventing pollution from
point sources to area sources.
Former statistics only cover point source pollution without area source pollution.
However, the national pollution survey completed in 2010 shows that pollution
sources in China have been transformed to a pattern mainly of area source
pollution, with sources such as rural and urban domestic, animal dung pollution,
and civil and small factory boilers making up nearly half of all pollution. Hence,
during the 12th Five-Year Plan, energy saving and emission reduction will turn
from control of point source pollution to area source pollution. As a result, the
field of energy saving and emission reduction will have two new aggregate
indicators: ammonia reduction and nitrogen oxide.
The first national pollution source census revealed that agricultural pollutant
emission is a major source, occupying 43.7 % of the total amount of chemical
oxygen demand, and agricultural is also the main source of nitrogen and
phosphorus, respectively occupying 57.2 % and 67.4 % (March 11, 2011,
China Environment Daily
). Thus, rural area source pollution will be the focal
point of environmental management.
1.4.6 Restraints on Carbon Emissions and the Environment
in the 12th Five-Year Plan
In April 2011, the
People's Daily
published “high-end interviews” by journalists of
the Xinhua Agency. In the interviews, when asked “What are the plans for this?
While keeping sound and rapid economic development, how can we achieve more
in environmental management and ecological protection?”, the Minister of the
Environmental Protection, Mr. Zhou Shengxian answered, “To accelerate the
transformation of the economic development mode is the main theme in the 12th
Five Year Plan. Development and the environment are inseparable. The essence of
the environmental problem is the issue of economic structure, production mode,
and development path. To discuss environmental protection without economic
development is to fish in the air, while to develop the economy without environ-
mental protection is to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Environmental
capacity increasingly becomes a major restraint on economic development. Revers-
ing the pressure on the environment onto structural adjustment and economic
