Environmental legislation makes polluters pay compensation

China will accelerate legislation on compensation for ecological damage, as the mechanism continues to prove its role in helping restore damaged environments across the country, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

From 2018 to 2021, authorities across the country handled about 11,300 such cases, with compensation amounting to almost 11.7 billion yuan ($1.7 billion), according to the ministry's department of law, regulation and standards.

Piloted in seven provincial regions in 2015, the mechanism has been expanded to all regions on the mainland since 2018.

Responding to questions from China Daily, the department showed statistics demonstrating the mechanism as effective in addressing ecological and environmental damage.

It said that thanks to the compensation, over 36 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and 300 million cubic meters of polluted surface water have been treated. The mechanism has also helped restore over 61 million square meters of forest.

In a case exposed in late 2019, for instance, a paper company named Meili was found to have illegally dumped a large amount of thick, black waste from papermaking in the Tengger Desert bordering Gansu province and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

According to the ministry's investigation, most of the pollutants were dumped from 2003 to 2007, contaminating soil and groundwater, and damaging plants.

In March 2021, after a third-party agency was brought in to assess the damage, a court in Zhongwei required the polluter to pay more than 198 million yuan in compensation in two stages.

In the first stage, Meili will pay about 44.2 million yuan to cover the cost to investigate and clean up the pollutants. The rest of the compensation will be used in the second stage to carry out compensatory restoration, groundwater monitoring and risk control in the contaminated area.

This is the first environmental damage compensation case that involves neighboring provincial regions in China, said Yu Wenxuan, director of the research institute of laws on environment and resources at China University of Political Science and Law.

It will help improve the cross-regional consultation mechanism for environmental damage compensation, he added.

In its statement, the department of law, regulation and standards also noted the remarkable progress the country has made in enhancing the institutions for the mechanism.

"The institutional framework for ecological and environmental damage compensation has been preliminarily established," it said.

The mechanism has been inscribed into several laws, including the Civil Code, the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environment Pollution Caused by Solid Wastes and the Forest Law, as well as 21 regional laws and regulations, the department said, adding 402 supporting documents have been introduced across the country.

Bie Tao, director of the department, vowed further efforts to promote legislation for the mechanism.

"Aside from striving to include ecological and environmental damage compensation into the Environmental Protection Law and other relevant laws, we will also make efforts to promote research into a dedicated law for the mechanism," he said.