Study On The Model Of Regional Environmental Protection Supervision Center

As approved by the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform, the former State Environmental Protection Administration established 5 regional supervision centers for the Eastern, Southern, Northwestern, Southwestern and Northeastern regions in 2006 and the rest Northern region of the country in 2007. These 6 regional supervision centers cover all 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in Chinese Mainland and the goal of the centers are strengthened regional supervision and environmental management for river basins, better resettlement of major trans-provincial environmental problems and improved emergency response capacity.The regional supervision centers help improve and optimize the environmental supervision system of China and play a vital role in stepping up enforcement and compliance at regional levels. However, there are also some difficulties facing them. The author introduces the current responsibility and power for the supervision centers and discusses the optimal allocation of the two. In light of the realities of the supervision centers, the author makes a step further to draw a sketch for the future development of these centers. The thesis can be divided into 3 parts.The first part is a general introduction of the 6 regional supervision centers as well as experiences of the regional offices of the US EPA that we drew upon during the establishment of the these centers.In the second part, the author analyzes the successes to date and emerging problems of the supervision centers with a detailed case study on the Environmental Supervision Center for South China.In third part, the author evaluates the performances of the supervision centers and put forward suggestions for improvement. In light of the current situations of the regional centers and their responsibility and power as granted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), the author evaluates the current model and puts forward solutions to existing problems so as to improve the performance of the supervision centers.