Public trust key to environmental disputes
On May 4, residents in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, took to the streets to protest against a Paraxyline (PX) processing plant planned for the Anning Industrial Park. Almost simultaneously, people in Pengzhou, Sichuan Province, appealed against a petrochemical project. After Xiamen citizens successfully drove out a PX plant through protests in 2007, similar environment-related conflicts have occurred in places such as Dalian, Shifang and Nantong. Obviously, these residents in Kunming want to achieve the same result.
This shows that problems related to site selection for China's large-scale heavy chemical projects remain unresolved. Conflicts between the development of Chinese society and its economy will remain as long as there is a need for economic development and increasing environmental awareness and demands.
China's economic development is inseparable from the development of heavy chemical projects. However, the reality is that residents do not want to pay for China's overall situation at the price of their living environment.
Questions over the development of heavy chemical projects are mainly discussed by local governments and enterprises. Governments have good intentions, with the goals of developing the economy and creating employment, while the public focuses on environmental situation. It has become a stalemate.
To break through this deadlock, local governments should make ordinary people's environmental anxieties their first concern. They should represent ordinary people's ecological and comprehensive interests and strive for these interests. Problems will be solved in a much more orderly and rational manner if governments are trusted by public in this regard.
Currently, citizens do not put such trust in governments when it comes to site selection for heavy chemical projects. Present-day Chinese society lacks the capability to form a proper consensus and express their views during the environmental assessment process.
Public hearings on heavy chemical projects also produce no effect whatsoever. Because they are afraid of the sharp attitudes of objectors, governments and enterprises just do their work perfunctorily and muddle along, which delays these conflicts and makes them more serious.
To solve the problem, governments should be decisive and reform-minded to provide experiences and set examples for others.
Local governments should stand with the masses right from the outset of feasibility studies for heavy chemical projects. They should concern themselves with the needs and worries of the people and have the capability to find the best outcome for the public.
Governments should show the masses that they are on the public's side. Only by achieving this can governments have the capability to lead the masses to seriously review heavy chemical projects and form a scientific view of environmental protection measures.
Hanging on to outdated social governance approaches will only make things worse. There is always a way out for heavy chemical projects. Current problems come from the methods of dealing with them.
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