Construction of Institutionalization for Ecological Civilization

To build a complete set of scientific institutional systems and carry out ecological civilization construction in a standardized manner, the essence is to use scientifically determined institutional norms as the basic mechanisms for ecological civilization construction. The Report of the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012 clearly stated that in the construction of ecological civilization, the construction of ecological civilization system should be strengthened. The construction of ecological civilization is a synthesis of ideas, systems and actions. It guides the design of the system through scientific ideas and regulates and guides the actions through the system, thus forming a complete system. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to the construction of ecological civilization. It has successively issued a series of major decision-making arrangements and a series of systems aimed at building a path for the construction of ecological civilization, highlighting the fundamental position of the institutionalization of ecological civilization in promoting the construction of ecological civilization. The eco-environment protection must depend on the system, include resource consumption, environmental damage, and ecological benefits into the economic and social development evaluation system, and establish a target system, assessment methods, and a reward and punishment mechanism that reflect the requirements of ecological civilization.

In December 2012, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control in Key Areas”, which requires strict environmental access and aims to form an “inverse transmission mechanism” for environmentally optimized economic development; In June 2013, the Supreme Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a judicial interpretation on handling criminal cases of environmental pollution; In September 2013, the State Council issued the "Action Plan of Air Pollution Prevention and Control ", and Beijing, Hebei and other key areas for air pollution prevention and control released the implementation plans for the “Action Plan of Air Pollution Prevention and Control” in the first place. In 2013, the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee reviewed and approved the “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform”, which proposed that to build an ecological civilization, it is necessary to establish a systematic and complete ecological civilization system, implement the strictest source protection system, damage compensation system, and accountability system, improve the environmental governance and ecological restoration system, and protect the eco-environment with systems. In May 2015, the “Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Accelerating the Construction of Ecological Civilization” proposed to accelerate the establishment of a systematic and complete ecological civilization system, guide, standardize and restrict various acts of developing, utilizing and protecting natural resources, and protect ecology with systems.

In September 2015, the “Overall Plan for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System” issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council systematically expounded the guiding ideology, concepts, principles, and objectives of the ecological civilization system reform, and clearly regulated the ecological civilization system with clear property rights, multiple participation, equal emphasis on incentives and constraints, and a complete system, composed of the natural resource asset property rights system, land and space development protection system, spatial planning system, total resource management and comprehensive conservation system, paid use of resources and ecological compensation system, environmental governance system, environmental governance and ecological protection market system, ecological civilization performance evaluation assessment and accountability system. As the top-level design of the reform in the field of ecological civilization and the programmatic program leading the construction of ecological civilization, it has important strategic significance for the institutionalization of ecological civilization. Safeguarding the construction of ecological civilization with systems must be based on laws and regulations. The institutionalization of ecological civilization should fully consider the effective connection with the current laws and management systems, so that the construction of ecological civilization steps on an institutionalized and orderly track. At present, we should focus on improving the natural resource asset property rights system and use control system, building an independent eco-environment supervision and law enforcement system, establishing a resource and environment ecological red line system and early warning mechanism, using market-oriented means reasonably, improving the performance evaluation and accountability system for leading cadres, and improving the participation assessment system for eco-environmental protection. Strengthening the institutionalization of ecological civilization is an inevitable choice based on the reality of failing to effectively contain the overall deterioration of the eco-environment in China over the years. It is an inevitable requirement for achieving the goal of building a well-off society with “blue sky, clear water and clean land” in an all-round way, and comprehensively deepening reform to form a system with complete systems, scientific standards and effective operation, and also an inevitable result of conforming to the characteristics of the ecosystem and the complexity of the evolution law.