【China's Steady Advance】 Effects of Ecological Governance Highlighted in the Examination
Editor's note: The sudden new outbreak of pneumonia is a major examination of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. Under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, normalized epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development "double co-ordination" has steadily moved toward "double victory", demonstrating the vivid practice and significant advantages of "governance in China". In order to further in-depth study, propaganda and implementation of the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Party, to better adhere to and improve the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, and to better translate the advantages of the system into governance effectiveness, the Central Internet Information Office and Qiushi Magazine jointly organized "China's Steady Advance" online theory communication column invites experts and scholars in the ideological and theoretical circles to write a series of theoretical articles.
Summary of content: The outbreak of the New Coronary Pneumonia epidemic further highlights the extreme importance of China ’s ecological governance system. Ecological environmental protection, biological safety and a healthy and civilized lifestyle are also important components of epidemic prevention and control. The efforts and key tasks proposed by the Fourth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee to adhere to and improve the ecological civilization system were confirmed in this epidemic exam. At the same time, the epidemic situation test further strengthened the determination and confidence of green development, and fully proved that economic development cannot be at the expense of ecology. Ecology itself is economy, and protecting ecology is development productivity.
A good ecological environment is an important guarantee for the health of the people. Ecological environmental protection, biological safety and a healthy and civilized lifestyle are also important components of epidemic prevention and control. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has deeply explored the harmonious relationship between man and nature, constantly deepened the understanding of the regularity of ecological civilization construction, and formed the fundamental guiding ideology of ecological environment construction-Xi Jinping Ecological Civilization thought. Under the guidance of this ideology, the party led the people to carry out a series of fundamental, pioneering, and long-term work. China has become the world ’s first developing country to implement PM2.5 governance on a large scale, and has the world ’s largest sewage treatment. Ability to comprehensively manage rivers, lakes and seas, make great efforts to solve the problems of safe drinking water and garbage disposal of urban and rural residents, initiate the "toilet revolution", and so on. These ecological governance effects have played an important role in safeguarding the environmental problems brought about by the outbreak of the epidemic this year and preventing the spread of the epidemic.
The epidemic situation exam highlights the efficient environmental emergency response capability
Since the outbreak, infectious medical waste has grown rapidly, and the growth rate in key epidemic prevention and control areas, such as Wuhan, has even increased by more than 50%. Medical waste disposal itself has strong professionalism, complexity, and particularity. As the last gateway to eliminate infections, such as improper management and disposal, it is easy to cause serious consequences such as secondary infection and the spread of bacteria.
In response to the severe situation of the explosion of medical waste, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment promptly established a leading group to respond to the epidemic situation, strengthened organization and coordination, and issued good environmental management of medical waste in the epidemic situation, supervision of medical wastewater and urban domestic sewage, emergency monitoring of ecological environment, radiation safety of medical institutions A series of documents including supervision service guarantee. At the same time, since January 20, the operation and disposal of medical waste disposal facilities across the country have been scheduled every day. In the key epidemic area of Wuhan, the medical waste during peak hours is more than 5 times that of normal days. Faced with such a severe situation, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment quickly dispatched a working group to the front line of anti-epidemic, and linked with the four levels of environmental protection departments at the provincial, municipal and district levels to keep an eye on the progress of medical waste treatment. In response to Wuhan's lack of professional treatment staff, lack of treatment facilities and equipment, 140 medical emergency disposal professionals were urgently transferred from 13 provinces across the country to raise 39 mobile disposal equipment with a daily disposal capacity of nearly 80 tons and 22 garbage transfers A large number of anti-epidemic materials such as vehicles, masks and protective clothing support Wuhan. At the same time, China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group was urgently coordinated to immediately build a Wuhan medical waste emergency disposal center with a disposal capacity of 30 tons per day. Taking multiple measures, Wuhan's medical waste disposal capacity has increased from 50 tons / day before the outbreak to 280.1 tons / day, and the national daily disposal capacity for medical waste has increased by 1220.0 tons / day compared to before the outbreak.
Although through unremitting efforts, the disposal of medical waste has achieved "Nissan Nissan", but there are shortcomings. The increase in the disposal capacity of medical waste nationwide mainly comes from the coordinated disposal of mobile equipment and hazardous waste incineration facilities. In the meantime, garbage incineration facilities have also been used to coordinate the disposal of medical waste. This disposal method can be used in an emergency, but in the long run, it is necessary to build standardized medical waste disposal facilities. On February 21st, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee proposed to speed up the shortcomings in the collection and treatment of medical waste and hazardous waste facilities. On February 24, the National Health and Health Commission and the Ministry of Eco-Environment and other ten departments jointly issued the "Work Plan for Comprehensive Treatment of Waste in Medical Institutions", which called for strengthening the construction of centralized disposal facilities. By the end of 2020, at least every city above the prefecture level should be completed A centralized medical waste disposal facility that meets operational requirements; by the end of June 2022, every county (city) will have a medical waste collection, transfer and disposal system. It is believed that through this epidemic exam, China's medical waste disposal system and capabilities will be further improved.
The epidemic situation examination highlights the powerful environmental monitoring capabilities
Improving the ecological environment monitoring and evaluation system is a basic work of ecological environmental protection in China and an important guarantee for promoting the construction of ecological civilization.
The safety of the water source area is related to the health of the people and the stability of the country. Since the outbreak, it is important to ensure that all types of surface water and groundwater are not contaminated by viruses. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "Emergency Surveillance Plan for Response to New Coronavirus Infection Pneumonia" within two days, and proposed to strengthen the early warning and monitoring of water quality in drinking water sources. During the epidemic prevention and control, on the basis of routine monitoring of drinking water sources, more Chlorine and biological toxicity and other epidemic prevention and control characteristic indicators are monitored. When abnormal conditions are found, they are encrypted and monitored, and measures are taken in a timely manner to find out the reasons and control risks, so as to ensure the safety of drinking water for the people. All local ecological and environmental departments responded immediately, quickly formed an epidemic prevention and control monitoring working group, established an emergency monitoring command team, encrypted the monitoring frequency, increased monitoring indicators, and used “true, quasi, complete” to address the water quality issues circulating on certain local networks. The monitoring data dispels the public's doubts and protects one side of clean water.
In fact, China has carried out ecological environment monitoring and evaluation work since the 1970s. However, for a long time, the monitoring authority of the ecological environment is mainly local, the indicators of monitoring data in different regions are inconsistent, and the technical force is uneven, making the data scientific. It is difficult to guarantee the authority, especially it is difficult to adapt to the overall monitoring of environmental problems such as cross-basin and cross-region.
Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee has attached great importance to the monitoring of the ecological environment and launched and implemented a series of institutional reforms and innovations. It includes a number of important reform measures including promoting the construction of an ecological environment monitoring network, implementing a vertical management system for monitoring and enforcement of environmental protection agencies below the provincial level, and improving the quality of environmental monitoring data; according to the principle of "who assesses and monitors", the quality of the air and surface water environment The monitoring authority was transferred to the central government; an ecological environment monitoring system of land and sea coordination, integration of heaven and earth, up and down linkage, and information sharing was initially established. At the national level, more than 1,400 urban environmental air quality automatic monitoring stations and more than 2,700 surface water environments were formed. The monitoring section and the ecological environment monitoring network composed of more than 1,800 automatic water quality monitoring stations, more than 1,500 marine environmental monitoring points, and nearly 80,000 soil environmental monitoring points are organized by the national monitoring agency to carry out monitoring and operation and maintenance. The ecological and environmental protection work provides strong support. These measures have effectively guaranteed the people's right to know, participate in, and supervise environmental quality, and their strong environmental monitoring capabilities have withstood tests in the epidemic test.
The epidemic exam highlights the extreme importance of ensuring biosecurity
Incorporating biosecurity into the national security system is an important measure that concerns people's health and social stability, and is also a major strategy related to national security. If a country has biosecurity problems, it will seriously affect people's health, economic operation, social order, national security and political stability. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Biosecurity has become one of the major survival and development threats faced by the whole world and all mankind. It is necessary to integrate biosecurity into the national security system from the height of protecting people's health, safeguarding national security, and maintaining long-term national security." , "Comprehensively improve national biosecurity governance capabilities."
In today's highly mobile society, pathogens are spread across species and across regions, resulting in the emergence of new and sudden infectious diseases. Over the past decade or so, the world has suffered from the SARS outbreak in 2003, the dengue fever outbreak in 2008, the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, and the Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in 2014, which caused huge losses to the health and economic society of people around the world. At the same time, the invasion of alien species caused the loss of genetic diversity and the destruction of the ecological environment. According to statistics, almost all ecosystems in our country have suffered from invasion of alien organisms, and 544 kinds of alien invasion organisms have been identified, of which more than 100 have occurred in large areas with serious damage. In addition, the research and development of biological weapons has been repeatedly prohibited, and the threat of biological warfare still exists. In the 2001 anthrax incident in the United States, although there were only 22 patients and 5 deaths due to a suspected bioterrorism attack, more than 30,000 people received preventive treatment alone, and the economic losses could not be estimated. These facts have repeatedly proven that if the fence of biosecurity is not well secured, the "black swan" that poses a risk to biosecurity will suddenly strike in unexpected ways, seriously threatening national security and social stability.
The outbreak of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic further highlights the extreme importance of ensuring biosecurity. Biosafety involves many fields, and it needs mutual support, coordination and cooperation from all aspects of the whole society. On April 15, 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly put forward the concept of "overall national security concept" at the first meeting of the Central National Security Committee, that is, "to build political security, homeland security, military security, economic security, and cultural security. , Social security, technological security, information security, ecological security, resource security, nuclear security are equal to the national security system. " This is a revolutionary improvement of our party's awareness of national security. Incorporating biosecurity into the field of national security will make the overall layout of national security richer and more comprehensive, which will help to systematically plan the construction of national biosecurity risk prevention and control systems and comprehensively improve national biosecurity governance capabilities.
In fact, in order to ensure biological safety and maintain the ecosystem, China has done a lot of work in recent years. In terms of the construction of biosafety laws and regulations, a series of laws and regulations related to biosafety, such as the Wildlife Protection Law and the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases, have been promulgated; in October 2019, the special law "Biosafety Law (Draft)" For the first time for review. At the same time, we should also see that there are still many weak links in China's basic theories of biological safety, biological threat monitoring and early warning, emergency response and technological support. For example, there is a lack of talents in the field of biosafety strategy, and the theoretical guidance role is not prominent; the regulatory system and organizational coordination system are not perfect, the division of department management is fragmented, and there are loopholes in the system and mechanism; the public has insufficient awareness of biosafety issues related to their own health and living environment , The awareness of preventing biosecurity risks is weak, etc. Complementing shortcomings and strengths and weaknesses are essential for building a "firewall" for biological safety.
The epidemic situation test confirmed the determination and confidence of green development
How will China develop after the epidemic hit? In March 2020, at the critical moment of resuming production and production, General Secretary Xi Jinping came to Zhejiang to investigate and visited Yucun Village, Tianhuangping Town, Anji County, and Xixi National Wetland Park in Hangzhou. During his inspection, he emphasized that the concept of "green water and green mountains is the golden mountain and silver mountain" has become the consensus and action of the whole party and the whole society, and has become an important part of the new development concept. During the inspection of Shaanxi in April, General Secretary Xi Jinping discussed the idea of firmly establishing green water and green mountains as Jinshan and Yinshan. He said that people will live up to the mountains, and the mountains will live up to them. The practice since the 18th National Congress of the Party has fully proved that economic development cannot be at the expense of destroying the ecology. The ecology itself is the economy, and protecting the ecology is the development of productive forces.
This year is the final year for a decisive victory to build a well-off society in an all-round way and a decisive battle against poverty. Building an ecological civilization is the meaning of building a well-off society in an all-round way. As General Secretary Xi Jinping said in a speech two years ago: "You cannot declare the full construction of a moderately prosperous society, while the quality of the ecological environment is still very poor, so that the people will not recognize it and cannot withstand history." Let ecological civilization promote high Quality development allows green development concepts to be integrated into economic development methods.
If the idea becomes a reality, there must be a systematic grasp. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized many times that the strictest system and the strictest rule of law protect the ecological environment. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has promoted comprehensive deepening reforms, accelerated the top-level design of ecological civilization and the construction of institutional systems, and successively issued "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Ecological Civilization" and "Overall Reform of Ecological Civilization System Reform" "Plan", formulated more than 40 reform plans related to the construction of ecological civilization, revised the Environmental Protection Law, and carried out a comprehensive and systematic deployment of ecological civilization construction from the aspects of overall goals, main principles, key tasks, and system guarantees. China's ecological civilization system is accelerating, and the “four beams and eight pillars” of the ecological civilization system have been established. The basic institutional frameworks of strict prevention at the source, strict management of the process, damage compensation, and severe punishment for the consequences have been initially established in the ecological civilization system. The Fourth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to uphold and improve ecological civilization from four aspects: the implementation of the strictest ecological environment protection system, the comprehensive establishment of an efficient resource utilization system, the improvement of the ecological protection and restoration system, and the strict ecological environmental protection responsibility system The direction and key tasks of the system. Next, it is necessary to upgrade mature experience and practice into a system and a law in a timely manner, make up for shortcomings, strengths and weaknesses, and better transform the advantages of the system into governance effectiveness.
Green development is not only a concept, but also a practice; it needs to sit down and do something. As long as we strictly implement the system and work for a long time, we will definitely be able to win the battle of pollution prevention and control, build a well-off society in an all-round way, and win the bright future of the sustainable development of the Chinese nation.