As Chinese grow ever more conscious of, and sensitive to, the environment, expectations are high that environmental watchdogs will get more aggressive and effective.

They are already aggressive, but obviously not effective enough.

Wang Jirong, Deputy Director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), confessed to the press late last week that local protectionism is rendering his colleagues helpless, and thus ineffective, in the provinces.

The sometimes forceful calls from Beijing for local development to take into account environmental consequences turn out to be insufficient to cure local administrators' chronic obsession with gross domestic product (GDP).

We can feel his embarrassment when Wang discloses that heads of local environmental protection agencies sometimes have to write to higher authorities incognito to report violations in their own areas.

When they choose to be loyal to their duties, environmental officials often have to risk offending peers who have responsibilities for local economic growth. How can they afford to be blamed as a hurdle to local development?

The SEPA has its own frustrations, too.

Earlier this year when it published a list of 41 major building projects that failed to satisfy a law that requires environmental evaluation procedures, it felt the helplessness its local subordinates had already experienced.

More recently, we were surprised to see the organization, instead of its Beijing subsidiary, directly involved when park managers at Yuanmingyuan, the old summer palace of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), were found to be disregarding environmental evaluation procedures.

Disappointingly, its aggressive intervention has proved less than effective. This sets us wondering if its repeated appeals for the park authorities to satisfy evaluation requirements could ever lead to a sensible answer.

At a recent press conference, the municipal authorities, while promising to properly address environmental concerns, indicated that things would not be as simple as they first appeared.

If the SEPA itself cannot solve this problem, we doubt whether its Beijing subsidiary could.

The consistently low profile of the municipal environmental authority is thought provoking.

There has to be a reason for it. Is it dereliction of duty or is it under pressure?

We share SEPA's frustration and find this situation unsettling.

The helplessness felt by our environmental watchdogs is damaging not only to Wang Jirong and his colleagues. Their powerlessness will throw all of us in harm's way. Premier Wen Jiabao's vow at the full session of the National People's Congress in March to let people have fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink will remain only an illusion unless we urgently change the way we grow.

If the SEPA and environmental regulations we have worked out remain toothless, we will have to look on as polluted water, foul air and contaminated food infect our society.

There have been calls to empower the environmental authorities. The SEPA also has its own way of self-empowerment to dispatch environmental watchers.

The recent establishment of a national energy affairs office, headed by Premier Wen, increases the desire to upgrade the SEPA.

A more powerful SEPA may indeed be more efficient.

But the SEPA's powerlessness has its roots not only in authorization. If environmental and thus the human costs of growth continue to be neglected on local government's development agendas, the SEPA and its local offices will always be in an awkward position, no matter how powerful they are.

So it makes more sense to manage an immediate overhaul of the yardsticks of progress in gauging local development.

You cannot expect local bureaucrats to put environmental soundness before GDP figures when you measure their achievement and competence simply in monetary terms.

(China Daily June 6, 2005)