Three-year Environmental Action Plan

As the host city of the 2010World Expo, Shanghai gives priority to environmental protection and sustainable growth. Thus the city launched a three-year evnironmental action plan since 2000. Till now, two rounds of Three-year Environmental Action Plan have been accomplished with great financial support from the municipal government. The city designates over 3% of total GDP every year and the amount is increasing by 10% annually. A new round of action plan (2006-2008), a total investment of 40 billion RMB, has been put into full implementation since the beginning of 2006. The action plan includes three key aspects, six functional sectors with all together 256 projects.

The three key aspects consist of infrastructure construction, pollution control and treatment in particular areas and improvement of management mechanism. The infrastructure projects run beyond half of the total projects implemented in this action plan. Among these projects, there are about 35% projects on sewage treatment, 31% on infrastructure in industrial parks and 17% on greenery construction. Another 21% of the total projects are those in pollution control and treatment in particular areas, including 20% FGD projects in power plants with coal as fuel energy, 29% on comprehensive rehabilitation in Wujing Industrial Park, 24% on agricultural pollution control and treatment. Besides, projects on management mechanism improvement consist of 59% pollution control projects, 9% water sources protection and ecological protection projects and 32% supervision capacity improvement projects.

Six functional sectors include water, air, solid waste, industry, agriculture and ecological protection. Water environmental protection shall give priority to upgrade sewage treatment facilities in urban area (such as Zhu Yuan and Bai Longgang), complete 3rd session of Suzhou Creek rehabilitation, facilitate the construction of sewage collection network and treatment facilities in suburban area, and rehabilitate suburban waterways by way of pollution interception. Air pollution treatment shall focus on FGD in power plant, pollution control on vehicles, dust and soot pollution control, implementation of Euro III standard on new automobiles in 2007. The essentials in solid waste disposal and utilization shall be the construction of domestic waste disposal facilities, the construction of security disposal facilities for industrial waste and radioactive waste and reduction of solid waste in key industries. Industrial pollution treatment and circular economy development shall focus on infrastructure construction in 80 old industrial parks, rehabilitation in Wujing Industrial Park, monitoring and supervision on key pollutant sources, and demonstration site development for cleaner production and circular economy. Agricultural pollution control and environmental improvement shall be put into the first consideration in agricultural sector. As to ecological protection, the key points shall include eco-zones for World Expo 2010, ecological Chongming development, national environmental demonstraiton site, afforestation and wetland protection.

The objectives of this new round of environmental action plan are to pay off “natural debt” due to years of industrialization and urbanization and to establish a preliminary image of eco-ctiy. To accomplish these objectives, the city of Shanghai will integrate social, economic and environmental objectives into a coordinated decision-making process to maintain a high standard of living, social harmony and environmental quality.