Poverty Alleviation of Ministry of Environmental Protection

　　【Overview】  The Ministry of Environmental Protection attaches great importance to poverty alleviation and development. In the first year for the implementation of the “12th Five-Year Plan”, the Ministry of Environmental Protection thoroughly implemented the spirit of the central work conference on poverty alleviation and development and the “Outlook for Development-oriented Poverty Reduction for China’s Rural Areas (2011-2020)”, took the environmental protection in impoverished regions as an important part of the development of environmental protection, continued to increase efforts on anti-poverty work, strived to improve the quality of environment through comprehensive governance, enhance the level of management through capacity building and tamp the development foundation through personnel training, accelerated the pace of addressing prominent environmental problems affecting the sustainable development and damaging the masses’ health, innovated the systems and mechanisms for poverty alleviation by environmental protection and made positive progress in industrial poverty alleviation and fixed-point poverty alleviation.

　　【Overall planning and policy support】  In 2011, the State Council held the seventh national conference on environmental protection, approved the implementation of the “‘12th Five-Year Plan’ for National Environmental Protection”, made deployments on the equalization of basic public services for regional environmental protection in contiguous poor areas and key counties and the rural environmental improvement taking the improvement of basic public service system for environmental protection as one of the strategic tasks for environmental protection during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, and the poverty reduction by environmental protection entered into a new stage of simultaneous planning and implementation of key environmental protection work. It strengthened policy support for environmental impact assessment of impoverished regions, promulgated the "Notice on Strengthening the Environmental Impact Assessment of the Western Regions" and decentralized to local governments the approval rights for the construction projects of preparation of environmental impact statement and registration form except nuclear, radiation and top-secret projects, social undertakings and new automobile construction project planning and environmental impact assessment documents, the coal development projects with annual production capacity of less than 5 million tons and the urban rail rapid transit projects, etc. At the same time, it actively promoted and made early intervention in the planning for environmental impact assessment, timely review the planning and gave priority to the approval of the environmental impact assessment of water conservancy, transportation and urban and rural infrastructure construction projects to accelerate the construction of livelihood projects and infrastructure projects.

　　【Pollution prevention of key watersheds and regions】 In 2011, in conjunction with four ministries including the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Environmental Protection prepared the “Water Pollution Prevention Plan for Key Watersheds (2011-2015)” (hereinafter referred to as the "Watershed Planning"), involving Haihe, Huaihe, Liaohe River, Chaohu Lake, Dianchi Lake,Songhua River, the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River, the Three Gorges Reservoir area and its upstream watershed, covering the Yanshan - Taihang Mountain area, Luliang Mountain area, Dabie Mountain area, Qinling Mountain area, Wuling Mountain area, the Wumeng Mountain area, the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai as well as the Liupan Mountain area. The "Watershed Planning" supports poverty-stricken areas to conduct urban sewage treatment, relevant facility construction, industrial pollution control, pollution prevention and control of drinking water sources, pollution prevention and control for livestock and poultry breeding, as well as regional water environment management, aiming at effectively improving the quality of water environment in poor areas. Combined with the implementation of the "‘12th Five-Year Plan’ for Heavy Metal Pollution Prevention and Control", it supported the heavy metal pollution prevention work in poverty-stricken areas.

　　【Comprehensive improvement of rural environment】 In 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection organized the preparation of the "‘12th Five-Year Plan’ for Comprehensive Improvement of Rural Environment in China”, included 14 contiguous poor areas into the coverage of the overall layout for comprehensive improvement of rural environment and, jointly with the Ministry of Finance, issued 4 billion Yuan of rural environmental protection funds to support the comprehensive improvement of rural environment. In accordance with the requirements of the “Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Forwarding the Implementation Plan of Ministry of Environmental Protection on Accelerating the Pace of Addressing Prominent Rural Environmental Problems through Facilitating Pollution Control by Rewards”, focusing on the villages with prominent environmental problems in the key counties for national poverty alleviation and development, it conducted the sewage waste disposal, protection of drinking water sources and livestock and poultry pollution prevention and control to control the pollution in a number of villages, effectively controlling the environmental pollution that harm public health and improving the quality of the rural environment.

　　【Ecological construction and protection】 It strengthened the integrated management of nature reserves, issued the "Notice on the Management of National Nature Reserve", supported the standardized construction of national nature reserves jointly with the Ministry of Finance, promoted the rural ecological construction in poverty-stricken areas, support a number of national eco-towns and eco-village, and established some models for rural ecological construction. To support the transfer payments of the Ministry of Finance for national key ecological function areas, it supported the ecological function protection of poor areas, organized the implementation of county ecological environment quality assessment, and urged the county government of poor areas to further intensify the protection. Combined with the implementation of the “Strategy and Action Plan for China’s Biodiversity Conservation (2011-2030)”, it carried out pilot projects of biodiversity conservation and the construction of poverty reduction demonstration zones in five regions, namely Xinbaerhu Right Banner of Hulunbeier City of Inner Mongolia, Lichuan City of Hubei Province, Sandu County of Guizhou Province, Yulong County of Yunnan Province and Taibai County of Shaanxi Province, aiming to explore new ways for integrated ecological protection and poverty reduction.

　　【Environmental protection personnel training】 In order to further improve the overall quality and operational capacity of  the environmental protection talents in the poor western areas, in 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection successively organized two trainings on environmental protection and government legal system, held three trainings for national, prefectural and county-level environmental monitoring heads, guided grassroots areas and their liaison offices to hold 49 trainings on environmental monitoring, held one national environmental emergency management staff training, and trained environmental protection talents for more than 300 person-times for the western poor areas. In accordance with the requirements of the national work conference on the counterpart support for Xinjiang held by the environmental protection system, in 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection sent 26 high-quality, capable, hardworking environmental monitoring technicians to provide technological support for Xinjiang.

　　【Environmental protection capacity building】 In 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection organized the implementation of the second phase of grassroots monitoring and enforcement capacity building project to support the construction of office building for county-level environmental protection departments in impoverished regions and gave priority to the project in the allocation of central government subsidies. It supported 931 county and district-level environmental monitoring agencies, making all the county and district-level monitoring in the central and western regions reach the requirements for standardized construction; and continued to support the standardized construction of monitoring stations. As a result, all the county-level monitoring stations of Ningxia, Qinghai, Hainan, Jilin and Chongqing reached the requirements for standardized construction.

　　【Fixed-point poverty alleviation】 It formulated the “Key Points for the Fixed-point Poverty Alleviation Work of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2011” and the “Task Decomposition of the ‘Key Points for the Fixed-point Poverty Alleviation Work of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2011’” to guide Weichang Manchu and Mongolian Autonomous County (hereinafter referred to as the "Weichang County") and Longhua County to prepare the 12th Five-Year Plan for Environmental Protection and the 12th Five-Year Plan for Rural Environmental Protection, helped Weichang County to develop ecological agriculture and organic agriculture, organized the Organic Food Development and Biodiversity Conservation Research of Nature Reserves in Bashang Region, arranged 5.43 million Yuan to support Chengde Jiabao Bio-Technology Co., Ltd of Weichang County to construct the 3,000 tonnes of marigold particles wastewater treatment project, arranged nearly 5 million Yuan to support the construction of national nature reserves in Hongsongwa, upper reaches of Luan River and Maojingba, cooperated with the Ministry of Finance to arrange 350 million Yuan of transfer payments for ecological compensation for Weichang County covered by the Northern Foot of Yinshan Mountain – Hunshandake Sand Windbreak Area, and arranged 1.5 million Yuan for the construction of grassroots environmental protection monitoring offices in Weichang County and Longhua County.