| Since the 21st century, China has witnessed an accelerating growth in environmental problems. Thus it is of great importance to reduce resources consumption and pollutant emissions. One of the key priorities for ensuring sustainable development is to increase investment in environmental protection and improve its efficiency.However, there are a variety of styles of investment in environmental protection due to different national characters. Multiple approaches are being taken by the USA and EU for financing. For instance, American environmental protection investment in 2000 was 171 billion dollars, accounting for 2.6% of the gross national product (GNP), while Germany, who got an earlier start in environmental protection investment, occupied 3% of GNP in 1988.In contrast, lots of defects in environmental policy and law need to be overcame in China, such as single channel of investment, lack of investment objectives, and low proportion of the total investment. An prospective attempt is to increase the environmental protection investment share of GDP to more than 1.5% at the end of 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2016).By reviewing relevant literature and summarizing the progress in relevant fields, we chose permanganate index of surface water, atmospheric NOX and SO2 concentration, and solid waste emissions as the main indicators to measure the environmental protection investment and benefit in Jilin Province. The results demonstrated the followings:(1) During 2003 and 2009, the average growth rate of environmental protection investment in Jilin Province reached 6.32%, representing a relatively week increase. In contrast, the average annual GDP soared by 16.44% that was estimated to be 2.6 times as much as the environmental protection investment. Thus the ratio of environmental protection investment to GDP reduced with fluctuation.(2) During 2003 and 2009, total environmental protection investment in Jilin Province amounted to 4.72 billion RMB, among which 2.55 billion RMB was used for waste-water treatment, accounting for 53.9% of the total; 1.86 billion RMB for waste gas treatment, accounting for 39.3%; and 0.11 billion RMB for solid waste management, accounting for 2.27%.(3) During 2003 and 2009, pollutant emissions per GDP declined dramatically, where COD emissions intensity decreased from 1.4751 g/RMB to 0.5012 g/RMB, SO2 emissions intensity descended from 1.0786 g/RMB to 0.5039 g/RMB, and dust emissions intensity reduced from 1.1460 g/RMB to 0.5331 g/RMB. It is indicated that with the improvement of environmental protection benefit in Jilin Province in the past six years, the investment had made great contribution to environmental protection especially to environmental pollution control.(4) In 2009, water quality of major rivers in gradeâ…¡in Jilin Province occupied 16.9%, while that in gradeâ…¢made up 35%. Comparing with 2003, water quality in grade V and below is much smaller in 2009, which illustrated that Jilin Province had achieved remarkable results in improving environmental quality of surface water.Despite the positive effects of environmental protection investment on environmental improvement, it is still riddled with problems. First, total investment is insufficient, and therefore it is still not able to keep pace with economic expansion; Then, environmental protection investment failed to keep balance in terms of water, solid waste and noise; Furthermore, investment in environmental techniques, monitoring, supervising and management is much less than that in infrastructure; Finally, investment showed significant regional differences, mainly focusing on urban areas rather than small towns.
|
PDF Full Text Request