The Yangtze River Delta ecological green integration development demonstration area is about to usher in its first birthday. The demonstration zones, including Qingpu District of Shanghai, Wujiang District of Suzhou City of Jiangsu Province and Jiashan County of Jiaxing City of Zhejiang Province, were established in November 2019. It is an important topic to look forward to the future development prospects, how to grasp the great opportunity of national strategy and help the demonstration zone realize green and high-quality development with policy dividend. In particular, the green policy related to ecological environment is particularly important for exploring the practical path of transformation from green water and green mountains to golden mountains and silver mountains.

The theme of demonstration area construction is ecological green, and strict environmental standards and requirements will be implemented for industries and enterprises in the region. At the same time, appropriate preferential policies should also be given, such as providing more convenient approval process and more intimate environmental governance services, so as to attract high-end industries and high-quality enterprises. In 2019, Jiangsu selected 10 parks to carry out the pilot project of integrated reform of ecological and environmental policies for industrial parks, providing preferential policies such as optimizing environmental access management, promoting pollution control in parks as a whole, and improving effective measures to support green development, and achieved good results. It is suggested that the demonstration area should refer to this reform pilot project, strengthen the reform and innovation in the whole area, and form a batch of replicable and popularized experiences.

For example, the reform of "regional environmental impact assessment + environmental standards" is carried out. Combined with the "three lines and one order", the regional environmental impact assessment is prepared with the designated key control units as the unit, and the project access environmental standards are proposed. According to the degree of environmental impact of the project construction, policies such as exemption of EIA, simplification of EIA contents and notification of commitment are adopted to shorten the approval time and optimize the approval service.

For another example, textile is a traditional industry in the demonstration area. Through the establishment of textile Circular Industrial Park, the concept of infrastructure sharing and resource recycling is used to help traditional industries realize green transformation and development.

As the "c-position" of the Yangtze River Delta integration, the demonstration area should be actively benchmarked with Shanghai Pudong New Area and Hebei xiong'an New Area in terms of ecological and environmental protection, adhere to the high standard starting and international vision, and make ecological green become the bright background and gold lettered signboard of the demonstration area. However, the "two districts and one county" of the demonstration area itself still has some shortcomings in personnel training, think tank reserve, innovation ability and technical support, which need to be supplemented and strengthened. It is suggested that we should continue to strengthen cooperation with universities and scientific research institutes, establish expert think tanks, deepen the research and practice of ecological environment protection, governance and restoration, improve the scientificity, systematicness and accuracy of pollution control, and create a benchmark demonstration in the Yangtze River Delta region and even the whole country. For example, Wujiang district has signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement on environmental quality improvement with the Environmental Planning Institute of the Ministry of ecological environment to carry out cooperation in key and difficult areas such as ozone treatment, pollution source analysis, and treatment of excessive total phosphorus factor. This cooperation mode is worth further promotion.

A large amount of capital investment is indispensable for pollution control and environmental infrastructure construction in the demonstration area. Only relying on the financial resources of "two districts and one county", it is inevitable that there will be some difficulties. With sufficient policy and financial support for good ideas and projects, and good positive incentives for market players, the construction of demonstration area can be accelerated. It is suggested to increase the financial support for the eco-environmental projects in the demonstration area, improve the investment and financing mechanism, and encourage all kinds of enterprises, funds and financial institutions to participate in the project construction of the demonstration area. For example, breaking the boundaries of administrative regions, establishing a unified ecological and environmental protection fund for the demonstration area to be used for project construction within the scope of the demonstration area, or establishing a special environmental protection group to provide professional services for the demonstration area in the fields of environmental governance, ecological environment monitoring, environmental information research and development, etc. In addition, enterprises should be encouraged to actively participate in environmental governance, and tax incentives should be given.

Source: China Environment News