A draft law on environmental impact assessments will enable China to examine its development projects more closely to prevent pollution and achieve sustainable development, according to sources with the National People's Congress.

Under the draft law, an environmental impact assessment - a national procedure for studying, forecasting and evaluating the likely impact of a proposed activity on the environment - could result in measures to prevent or abate any negative impact on the environment and offer methods and mechanisms to monitor such an impact.

The draft legislation demands that administrative bodies make an environmental impact assessment of their land use, city planning, and regional construction and exploitation programs, as well as their plans relating to agriculture, energy, forestry, manufacturing, tourism, transport, water resources, and the exploitation of natural resources.

All construction projects will have to undergo an environmental impact assessment, according to the draft law. Currently, more than 90 percent of relevant projects in China have undergone such tests in the past decade, according to the congress sources.

Senior legislators started to review the draft legislation in December 2000. The draft was submitted to the latest session of the congress Standing Committee for a second reading last week.

Debate among senior lawmakers at a panel discussion at the weekend focused on whether the nation should have conduct environmental impact assessments of its strategic policies or decision-making process.

Legislator Li Meng said it is more important to have environmental impact assessments of national policies, which would be conducive to pollution control and prevention.

Li said such evaluations started in the 1970s elsewhere in the world and that seven countries - including Canada, Germany and the United States - have passed legislation demanding environmental impact assessments on national policies and plans.

But legislator Zhang Haoruo said it is not practical to introduce such a requirement now. He proposed that the environmental scrutiny of national policies be conducted at some time in the future when conditions are "more mature."

(China Daily August 26, 2002)