Environmental Corruption Leads To The EIA Interest Chain &Nbsp; &Nbsp; The Ministry Of Environmental Protection Has Thoroughly Investigated The EIA Institution.

For some environmental impact assessment (EIA) agencies, it is now at a time of ice and ice.

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In the notice issued by the Ministry of environmental protection in 2010, 24 EIA agencies in Heilongjiang, Hebei, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hainan and Sichuan were listed as spot checks, and 53 EIA reports in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi and other provinces and municipalities were listed as special inspection objects.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection said that the results of the random inspection will be announced in due course, and the quality of the preparation of the environmental impact assessment documents and the evaluation agencies and personnel with other irregularities should be punished.

"We have already got some clues, most of the agencies and reports that have been sampled, some of which have not been examined recently, and others have been reported."

The Ministry of environmental protection disclosed to our correspondent.

According to the insiders, this annual EIA check action conducted by the state's highest environmental protection administration department can play a deterrent effect to a certain extent, but it only exposes the tip of the iceberg.

The confusion of the entire EIA market is far from being solved by means of administrative means.

EIA "seller's market"

China's environmental impact assessment system has a history of more than 30 years.

Although there are doubters that the EIA of construction projects is a "temporary solution", it is undeniable that the EIA system has played an important role in adjusting the industrial structure and containing pollution.

As the number of construction projects is increasing year by year, more and more people are eyeing the big cake of "EIA", which spawned an industrial chain with interlocking interests, including project owners, EIA agencies and local government departments.

In this industry chain, the role of evaluation institutions is particularly noticeable.

In June this year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection released the results of the EIA in 2009. Among the 75 EIA units selected in 20 provinces of the country, there were 30 irregularities, poor quality of work or non-standard management. The proportion was as high as 40%.

A person engaged in the EIA approval said that these phenomena had long been an "open secret" in the EIA industry.

"Some EIA agencies can finish the EIA report ten years in a year. Some are simply making up the rules, making fraudulent contents and delivering goods one day at a fast speed, and even appearing on the cover of the report and the content of the ox's head are not written in Shanghai for the project of Ma Zui and Beijing."

Yu Jingwen, a researcher at the environmental engineering assessment center of the Ministry of environmental protection, said that the quality of EIA reports has improved in recent years, but on the whole, it is still in a state of uneven level.

One industry believes that one of the reasons for the destruction of the normal order of the EIA market is that the entry threshold is too low.

"Many of the evaluators of the EIA report are not even familiar with the industry where the project is located."

An official of the environmental impact assessment department of the Ministry of environmental protection told reporters that the lack of strength of the EIA is the most fundamental factor that restricts the quality of the EIA.

As of September this year, there were 1091 furniture EIA qualification agencies and more than 9000 qualified EIA engineers.

There are more than 300 thousand projects that need to be approved by the EIA this year.

He believes that at present, the EIA market is a seller's market, and the supply of qualified "legitimate" engineers is far behind the demand for new and expanded projects.

In the long run, it is not only difficult to ensure the quality of EIA, but also spawn a large number of "affiliated" units and "affiliated" evaluators who do not actually have legal qualifications.

"In many counties and cities, an EIA unit can form a monopoly, and it is responsible for compiling EIA reports for all projects in the whole region. The number of people can not keep up with them. How can we guarantee the quality?" the former official said.

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It is difficult to "decouple".

The quality of EIA reports is not the key to the EIA industry.

After all, the preparation of EIA report is only the first step. Next, we need to receive expert examination and approval from the environmental protection department.

"So the question is, how does the report that is obviously not in good quality pass the examination and approval, or bypass the examination and approval?"

Generally speaking, China implements the environmental impact assessment system of construction projects and classifications management of environmental protection for construction projects.

In March 2009, the Ministry of environmental protection issued new regulations to collect and approve some "two high and one capital" construction projects, which may have significant impact on the environment.

But this reporter understands that at the local level, the weakness of the EIA approval link has become the norm.

Driven by economic interests and weak supervision, EIA approval provides a hotbed and soil for corruption.

A person who was responsible for the EIA approval said frankly that the phenomenon of "black kits" and "taking kickbacks" by administrative power and the phenomenon of project owners' direct bribing approvals had never disappeared.

In 2007, Hangzhou broke out the largest environmental corruption case since the founding of the people's Republic of China, involving more than 90 people.

According to "Southern Weekend" report, the environmental protection system in the city generally uses the approval power of EIA projects to collect EIA management fees from 20% to 40%.

In 2008, the corruption case of environmental protection system in Zhangzhou, Fujian province was exposed.

Among them, more than 10 environmental protection system staff use the approval authority, in the designated or disguised way, for the EIA intermediary business solicitation business, accepting bribes.

According to people in the information, in Beijing, in recent years, there has been a continuous number of leaders of the division because of the environmental assessment of corruption.

The rent-seeking behavior in environmental protection administrative organs, and the practice of some local government officials to promote project construction due to their political achievements or selfish interests, has made the EIA report debased in many cases.

On November 5th, at the briefing of special law enforcement inspection of EIA in Beijing on November 5th, Wu Xiaoqing, Vice Minister of environmental protection, pointed out that "environmental violations of construction projects, administrative intervention by some local governments affected the implementation of the EIA law, the implementation of the EIA commitment is difficult, the environment is soft, and the progress of planning EIA in some areas is slow."

When some people in the industry described the current EIA market with "a mess of mud", the environmental protection department's reform of the environmental impact assessment agency is also slowly advancing.

For now, in addition to a handful of private enterprises with the qualification of EIA, the vast majority of environmental impact assessment agencies are public institutions belonging to local environmental protection systems or research institutes.

Among them, the Central Academy of environmental protection affiliated to the local environmental protection system is mostly engaged in EIA.

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In 2008, Vice Minister of environmental protection, Pan Yue, had publicly stated that we should start with the reform of the system and let the EIA and the environmental protection departments "completely decouple and completely disengage", so as to ensure that the assessment of the ring is not subject to interference of interests.

According to a timetable for environmental protection reform obtained by our correspondent, according to the initial plan of the Ministry of environmental protection, nearly 600 research institutions in all provinces and municipalities should complete the EIA system reform by the end of 2011 and the end of 2012.

But after two years of discussion, the idea of "decoupling" from the government departments has not come true.

At the forum of EIA reform in East China's Ministry of environmental protection in April 2009, the representatives of the EIA representatives were quite representative.

The summary of the meeting showed that the delegates attending the forum agreed that all the institutes in the East China are independent legal entities. The EIA work has no interest relationship with the environmental protection examination and approval department. There is no question that the EIA agencies need to be stripped or decoupled from the Academy.

These representatives also indicated that without the feedback of EIA revenue, the Academy of sciences would be faced with the plight of insufficient funds, which eventually led to the difficulty in running the Academy of Sciences and the loss of comprehensive professionals, and the level of ability to serve the EPA would be greatly reduced.

Moreover, if the EIA is commercialized and faces fierce competition in the market, it is likely to be linked to the project construction unit.

Our correspondent understands that despite the opposition from the EIA, the Ministry of environmental protection will carry out the EIA reform and will be one of the highlights of next year.

The EIA reform will start from the Ministry of environmental protection, and take the lead in the pilot work of "decoupling" in five institutions, including the environmental planning and Research Institute, the Environmental Science Research Institute, the Southern China Institute of environmental science, the Nanjing Institute of environmental science and the Sino Japanese Friendship Environmental Protection Center.

However, an official of the EIA Department of the Ministry of environmental protection admitted to this reporter that even if he had to take his own initiative, it would be quite difficult to push ahead with the work.

"Public institutions and enterprises are quite different in nature and need to be coordinated. We are also very worried that if the reform is too fast, we will lose a lot of backbone talents and cause negative effects."

The official said that the greatest hope of the EIA reform is actually relying on the national level package reform.

"The national plan did not come out one day, we can only slowly pilot, slowly groping."