Working toward a better environment

The report delivered to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) by General Secretary Hu Jintao lists environmental resources as a chief problem China now faces. For the first time, the report touches on environmental protection in length; and for the first time, it includes conservation culture.

At present, many factors have caused serious environmental problems in China. One of them is the wrong view of development that takes pure GDP growth as the yardstick. Other factors include the lack of an evaluation system on environmental problems and the lack of an environmental monitoring system.

We now practise a sustainable development strategy. The important content of this strategy is industrial planning. And the evaluation of environmental impacts caused by such planning is what we mean by the term strategic environmental evaluation.