China Environmental Governance

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) is generally considered to be understaffed and weak. When the former agency was granted ministry status in 2008, many believed that it was a sign of bigger and better things to come. But progress has been slow and some argue that MEP was more aggressive at tackling pollution prior to its promotion. Generally, local governments remain more determinative of the effectiveness of environmental regulation than any oversight MEP attempts to exercise, and this is due in part to the weak enforcement of existing law.

But there are times when MEP seems emboldened with superpowers far beyond what one might expect. The recent crackdown (or “environmental storm” as it is called in China) on lead battery manufacturers and smelters is a grand example of powerful environmental enforcement. But what’s law or a sophisticated regulatory regime got to do with it? Interestingly, the same legal weaknesses the hamstring MEP from adequately overseeing local environmental bureaus, is precisely what permits MEP, now with its mercurial supporters, to launch a crackdown that by some accounts has already closed “most” of China’s lead-acid battery producers.

Bloomberg reports that “most” lead-acid battery manufacturers have been shutdown.

Plants in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Sichuan and Henan provinces have suspended production for about two weeks, said Xu Hong, head of the lead-acid battery branch at the China Electrical Equipment Industry Association. The Ministry of Environmental Protection ordered local governments on May 18 to tighten management of battery units and recycled lead producers following incidents of poisoning from so-called heavy metals. ….

… “Regardless of the plants’ conditions, they’ve all been shut down, and there is no timetable now to resume operations,” China electrical equipment association’s Xu said.

A rash of high-profile lead and cadmium poisoning incidents in recent years was certainly an impetus for this crackdown. In Zhejiang 74 people were detained and power and water was cut to 652 plants.

Forcing all polluters to close shop is an effective means of reducing pollution. But is this a sustainable form of environmental regulation?

For decades authorities neglected to empower the national MEP or advance a strong administrative law regime capable of enforcing environmental standards equitably and sensibly nationwide, and in so doing they tacitly sanctioned the current de facto system of decentralized environmental regulation that resulted in entire towns being poisoned.

While the current crackdown looks good on paper and in the press, it’s worth asking whether much will really change in a year from now? Just as the crackdown on energy intensity at the end of 2010 may have looked impressive then, it resulted in thousands of diesel generators being amped up, and then the release of pent-up energy demand in the first quarter of 2011. (For more on the energy intensity rebound see this lucid Xinhua article.)

The fact that environmental storms like these are unsustainable is very clear. Businesses and investors want predictability. They want to know that their investments will not be shutdown on the populist whim of an agency. And for the average citizens, they should not have to suffer deadly levels of pollution before a regulator decides to take action.

Without more attention paid to building a reliably stronger and independent MEP, it is quite likely that many of these battery producers will do what is all too common in China — pack-up and move to a more remote place where the local government is happy to increase pollution for increased revenue.