Leading officials responsible for environmental action

In a move to ensure government bodies earnestly fulfill their duties in environmental protection, the country's central authorities published a guideline recently, specifying leading officials at various levels of Party committees and governments be the first to be held responsible for environmental protection work in their jurisdictions.

Party committees and governments at the provincial level should hold regular conferences on environmental protection work, said the document, which was issued by 18 central departments including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Supreme People's Court.

The leading officials who oversee environmental protection work should report how they have fulfilled duties on the work in the conferences, it noted.

A similar mechanism should also be set up at prefecture and county-level committees and governments, according to the document.

The guideline stipulates that each provincial-level committee and government should compile a "responsibility list", detailing departments that shoulder leading responsibilities on specific environmental protection issues. The list should be made public.

It rules that departments with the State Council, the country's Cabinet, should report their work on environmental protection to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the council every year.

In the report they should elaborate on how they have implemented environmental protection work and taken leading responsibilities in the past year, the guideline said.

Aside from making such annual reports to local CPC committees and governments, it said government organs in different areas should send a copy of the reports to their superior agencies and the environmental departments at their same level.

In the selection of leading officials for departments that shoulder key duties in environmental protection, cadres who implement the new development philosophy and promote high-quality development in their work will be given priority, it noted.

The guideline was made public after it was approved by the central committee for deepening overall reform, according to a news release from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which was held last month, made a strategic plan to promote modernization featuring harmony between humanity and nature, which has put new and higher requirements on environmental protection work, it said.

The guideline is expected to help form an environmental governance system that features coordinated, concerted actions from different departments and ensures that "responsibilities are fully assumed "in the construction of an ecological civilization in the country, the ministry said.

The guideline also demands the establishment of a smooth coordination mechanism between environmental authorities and public security organs, procuratorates, courts and other organs to beef up crackdowns on environmental violations.

The coordination between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice should be intensified to ensure suspected criminal cases that jeopardize the environment can be transferred, investigated, prosecuted and taken to trial in a timely fashion, it said.

An information-sharing mechanism will also need to be set up between procuratorates involved in public interest litigation and administrative law enforcement organs, it said.