Following the legislative response of the government to Mr. Zhang's proposal - the Suggestions on the Care of Pregnant Women in Society, his proposal - the Suggestions on Strengthening the Status of Environmental Protection as a Basic State Policy - received another response.
On April 24, 2014, the eighth session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress adopted the new Environmental Protection Act, which is the first revision of the Act in 25 years since its adoption in 1989. Environmental protection has become as important as family planning and land protection from a national policy at the legal level.
The new Act has three essential highlights. The first is basic concepts: ecological civilization, basic national policies, protection priority, public participation, coordination between economic and social development and environmental protection are enshrined in law. The second is that there are many severe measures, such as punishment on a daily basis, seizure and detention, regional restricted approval, public interest litigation, blacklist system, administrative detention and so on, aiming at the problems of low cost of breaking the law and high cost of abiding by the law. The third is a better system: monitoring agencies, early warning of resource environmental bearing capacity, target-oriented responsibility system and assessment, ecological compensation, ecological red line, public monitoring and early warning of environmental pollution, emission permit, liability insurance, information disclosure, etc.
These three highlights are reflected, to varying degrees, in Mr. Zhang's Suggestions on Strengthening the Status of Environmental Protection as a Basic State Policy. Mr. Zhang's Suggestions on Strengthening the Status of Environmental Protection as a Basic State Policy contains eight suggestions, including: develop systematic and complete legal provisions; strengthen pollution responsibility and increase illegal costs; strengthen the power of law enforcement in environmental protection, and improve the capacity of law enforcement in environmental protection; improve the supporting mechanism, and take environmental protection as the main assessment indicator for cadre appointment.
Particularly in the seventh suggestion, he mentioned that the environmental information disclosure system should be improved, the public participation and hearing system of environmental assessment should be improved, and publicity or hearings should be implemented for major decisions and development projects involving the people's environmental rights and interests, so as to ensure the public's right to know, participate in and supervise the environment. This coincides with the concept of public participation in the new Environmental Protection Act.