Study Of Unified Atmospheric Environment Standards Of Key Regions

To unify ambient air standard in key regions is an activity to prevent air pollution with the same ambient air quality standard and emission standard of air pollutants that is made and applied in key air pollution areas. As the frequent events about atmospheric environment pollution and the regulations about unified standard in Environment law, it promotes enacting the unified ambient air standard in key regions. To solve our regional air pollution, we need to abandon the old concept of preventing air pollution just by administrative divisions, while turn to build an across-regional joint prevention and control mechanism. Unified regional ambient air standard is an effective way to solve regional air pollution.In key regions, we have set amounts of ambient air standards, including state environmental standards and local environmental standards. From the current situation, there are some problems existed as follows: the disunity between environment standard project and environmental standard values in trans-provincial key regions; the low environment standard values and lack of environment standards in provincial areas. The main reasons for these problems are the disadvantages of constituting mode of two-level environment standards and the local areas are not well targeted by ambient air standards.To prevent regional air pollution events from continuing to happen and guarantee citizens’ environmental rights, it is extremely urgent to improve regional ambient air quality. In Chinese mainland, we have the same economic, social and cultural systems, so the core of unified ambient air standard is to analyze whether there is any space for creating law system, including the disposition of the rights to set regional ambient air standards and the body of exertion for the rights. In accordance with the law in our country, the disposition of the enactment power includes two situations: one is based on administrative authority; the other is on legal authorization. The body of exertion for the former is the environmental protection departments under the State Council; the body of exertion for the latter is the provincial governments in key regions. When asked to confirm decision-making bodies for ambient air standard in key regions, we can’t generally think they must be the environmental protection departments under the State Council and the people’s governments. The key regions should be further divided into trans-provincial and provincial key regions for discussion, and thus there are different decision-making bodies under different situations. The environment ministry is certainly the decision-making body in trans-provincial key regions.Nonetheless, it depends on different situations whether the people’s governments are qualified for decision-making bodies. We have no region to implement the regional environment standards that are jointly set by people’s governments, so they don’t enjoy the qualification of decision-making bodies in this case. It’s legal and feasible for regional coordination organizations led by environment ministry to work with the provincial governments to set the same ambient air standard in key regions, so the provincial governments enjoy the qualification of decision-making body under this situation. In provincial key regions, as the municipal and county-level cities without the qualification of the enactment power, environment ministry and provincial governments are certainly the decision-making bodies.It should include the basic principle, safeguard mechanism and assessment mechanism during the choosing process of unifying ambient air standard in key area. It should be guided by the principles of the priority of environmental protection, balancing of interest and public participation when we set the ambient air standard in key area. As the current setting process of environment standard can’t reflect the particularity of the region, we need to optimize it. To ensure the implementation of unified ambient air standard, we should establish a total-amount-control system for pollutants, a mechanism for environmental data sharing and peer monitoring, and a mechanism for ecological compensation in regions. At last, we should establish an assessment mechanism for the implementation performance of ambient air standard in key regions based on legitimacy and economical efficiency.