Restoring hundreds of millions of mu of contaminated farmland: how can third-party governance drive it forward?
“We must change the current situation of relying mainly on government fiscal input alone; we must rely on the power of society, introduce third-party governance, and carry out comprehensive environmental services.”——Liu Zhengjun
Environmental governance has become one of the hot topics at this year's Two Sessions. In the 2015 government work report, Premier Li Keqiang acknowledged that “environmental pollution is severe in some places” and that “environmental pollution is a scourge to people's livelihood and a pain in people's hearts, and must be tackled with an iron fist.”
Liu Zhengjun, a deputy to the National People's Congress, vice chairman of the China Environmental Protection Association, and chairman of Hunan Yongqing Environmental Protection Group (hereinafter referred to as Yongqing Group), believes that air and water pollution are visible to everyone and have already attracted widespread attention, with the government also devoting enormous efforts to tackling them. However, soil pollution is relatively hidden, and among it, farmland contamination is even more a matter of food security, making its treatment and restoration extremely urgent.
Farmland restoration projects account for only about 3% of the total number of soil restoration projects nationwide
On March 7, Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining acknowledged at a press conference: “Good soil quality is a very important guarantee for safeguarding the safety of agricultural products and the health of the people.” Accelerating soil pollution treatment and strengthening farmland protection were also core themes at the consultation meeting on handling proposals of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Liu Xin, dean of the Food and Health Engineering Research Institute at Sun Yat-sen University, pointed out that providing high-quality and safe agricultural products requires a sound ecological environment as a guarantee, but currently about 10% of China's farmland is contaminated by heavy metals, and heavy metals in the soil enter the human food chain along with grain. Chen Zhangliang, vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, said that cancer is directly related to heavy metal pollution. Once soil is contaminated by heavy metals, it is very difficult to remediate, and heavy metal pollution of soil has reached the point where action cannot be delayed.
In April 2014, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Land and Resources jointly released the first national soil pollution survey report, which showed that the pollution situation is very severe. Among different land use types nationwide, farmland soil had the highest exceedance rate of sampling points, at 19.4%, and the environmental quality of farmland soil is worrying. Among the pollutants, the main inorganic pollutants were 8 types: cadmium, mercury, arsenic, copper, lead, chromium, zinc and nickel, while the main organic pollutants were hexachlorocyclohexane, DDT and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
In April 2014, China launched comprehensive treatment for the restoration of farmland contaminated by heavy metals, carrying out the first batch of restoration pilots on 1.7 million mu of heavy metal-contaminated farmland in the Chang-Zhu-Tan area of Hunan Province (Changsha, Zhuzhou, Xiangtan). According to the basic approach of the Ministry of Agriculture of “adapting measures to local conditions, government guidance, farmers' voluntary participation, and no reduction in income,” the Chang-Zhu-Tan pilot divided land according to the severity of pollution into “compliant production zones” with lighter pollution, “controlled production zones” with moderate pollution, and “alternative planting zones” with severe pollution.
Liu Zhengjun told China Economic Weekly that to date this is the only large-scale farmland restoration pilot project implemented in China. In addition, the farmland restoration pilot in Shiping Township, Gulin County, Sichuan Province, the soil pollution treatment pilot at the Zongqu Village sweet cherry base, and Wanshan District in Tongren City, Guizhou Province, have also included a total of 50,000 mu of farmland in treatment plans.
“According to incomplete statistics, the number of farmland restoration projects completed through market behavior is only 7. Even including national pilot projects, farmland restoration projects account for only about 3% of the total number of soil restoration projects nationwide.” Liu Zhengjun pointed out that farmland restoration projects are not only few in number, but also have the lowest average investment amount, only 1/5 of the average investment amount of site restoration projects and 1/3 of the average investment amount of mining area restoration projects. Funding mainly comes from central government subsidies. Clearly, faced with the enormous scale of contamination of hundreds of millions of mu in China today, farmland restoration is still far from sufficient in both scale and funding input.
On March 8, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Li Ganjie, in responding to questions from members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said that since 2010, a total of 1.6 billion yuan in fiscal funds has been allocated for soil pollution treatment and restoration.
Even greater difficulties may come from the weakness of the entire soil governance system. Li Ganjie acknowledged that the basic situation of soil pollution nationwide has not yet been fully ascertained. The density of the rough survey completed so far is one testing point every 8 km, and the detailed survey to be carried out next is very necessary; laws, regulations, standards and systems all need improvement, weak technologies need innovation, and monitoring and supervision capacity needs to be enhanced.
Liu Zhengjun introduced that the Chang-Zhu-Tan area of Hunan has taken many measures in advancing the restoration and treatment of contaminated farmland and has achieved phased results. However, because this work is still in its initial stage, the level of restoration and treatment is not yet satisfactory, and there are mainly four problems: insufficient survey area and precision, immature restoration and treatment technologies, an unsound monitoring system, and insufficient funding input.
Third-party governance of environmental pollution is a better model with low input and high efficiency
“What delights us most is that ‘promoting third-party governance of environmental pollution’ has been explicitly written into this year's government work report.” Liu Zhengjun said that from practice, the third-party governance model is a model with low input and high efficiency, and departments such as the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Land and Resources are all vigorously promoting third-party governance models mainly in the form of PPP (a corporate cooperation model of “government-led, enterprise participation, and national and provincial subsidies”).
At this year's National People's Congress session, Liu Zhengjun put forward 10 proposals in one go, the core of which was precisely third-party governance. “I believe that Yongqing Group's years of experience in exploring the third-party governance model will provide useful reference for China's soil governance, especially the restoration of contaminated farmland.” Liu Zhengjun said.
Yongqing Group was founded in 1998, with total assets exceeding 10 billion yuan. It is one of the few comprehensive environmental protection enterprises in China with a complete industrial chain. The group has 6 subsidiaries, among which Yongqing Environmental Protection Co., Ltd. is the only listed environmental protection enterprise in Hunan and was approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2012 as the first contract environmental service pilot enterprise in China.
“The treatment and restoration of contaminated land is difficult, costly and long-cycle, and faces many challenges. The core issue is who is responsible, who pays, and where the money comes from. The third-party service model strongly promoted by Premier Li Keqiang can better solve this problem.” Liu Zhengjun said.
In 2012, Yongqing Environmental Protection and Xinyu City in Jiangxi Province explored contract environmental services for the first time in China, with the Xinyu municipal government purchasing environmental services from Yongqing Environmental Protection and implementing pollution treatment in a market-based manner.
Liu Zhengjun introduced, “After several years of effort, Xinyu City's comprehensive environmental management capacity has been significantly improved, environmental quality has improved across the board, and at the same time it has driven the rapid development of the environmental service industry, with output value growing by more than 20% annually.”
The Zhubugang old industrial zone in Yuetang District, Xiangtan City, is a key area for heavy metal pollution treatment in the country and Hunan Province. In October 2014, Yongqing Group and Yuetang District took the lead in launching a nationwide PPP project for soil heavy metal pollution treatment. The Yuetang District government and Yongqing Group signed a public-private partnership PPP cooperation agreement, jointly injecting 100 million yuan to establish a joint venture company as the investment and implementation platform for heavy metal pollution projects.
According to the cooperation agreement, Yongqing Group will use its own advantages in environmental treatment technology, engineering management, project operation and team to propose a scientific and systematic comprehensive treatment and ecological restoration plan for pollution treatment across the entire region, as well as funding estimates.
“In the future, the government only needs to act as a referee, do a good job in overall planning and performance evaluation, and then it can improve project implementation efficiency and reduce treatment costs.” Liu Zhengjun introduced, “As the third party in environmental protection governance, the enterprise provides a professional team and technical support and is responsible for actual operations, and can only gain returns from the benefits of treatment results. In this way, in order to survive and develop, the enterprise must go all out to meet treatment standards.”
Liu Zhengjun believes that because of its particularity, farmland restoration cannot be like industrial site restoration, which can be used for commercial land afterward and thus quickly recover costs and make profits. This further highlights the urgency of establishing a new financing model. We must change the current situation of relying mainly on government fiscal input alone; we must rely on the power of society, introduce third-party governance, carry out comprehensive environmental services, break the decentralized operation model based on individual projects, and adopt a packaged approach to introduce third parties for integrated design, modular construction and integrated operation. For environmental performance contract service projects, establish a fair and reasonable performance assessment and evaluation mechanism, with the level of public fiscal payment linked to treatment performance.
“Contaminated farmland covers a much larger area than industrial sites and has a broader impact. Accelerating the restoration of contaminated farmland is extremely urgent, and accelerating third-party governance is an inevitable path.” Liu Zhengjun said.