Public need comes first with local projects

By Mao Shoulong Source:Global Times Published: 2012-7-3 21:00:06

The government of the city of Shifang, Sichuan Province on Monday halted the construction of a heavy metal refinery after thousands of people took to the streets to protest over the project due to environmental concerns. Some people even clashed with local police. The issue was finally settled, but the incident deserves reflection.

This is obviously not the first time we have seen huge public outcry over local governments' attempts to attract investment while overlooking environment. Similar incidents have happened before, most recently in Dalian.

When attracting investment, local governments tend to set economic development as priority and lower the standards of environmental evaluation, ignoring the projects' impact on the lives of local residents. Some local governments even help investors bypass proper environmental evaluation, creating the conditions for future crisis.

In many cases, local governments chose to take these risky options, believing that the public is unlikely to discover what's going on, and even if they do, that they will not seek to protect their rights in a violent way.

However, if local governments took environmental protection as a precondition for any investment, the construction of many controversial projects would not have been approved. This should be a basic priority for a service-orientated government and the scientific development of the country.

What many local governments most urgently need to improve is their ability to communicate with the public. Without this, the public's trust in the government will be severely compromised. Shifang offers us a good example of this.

It's been claimed that the heavy metal refinery project will be able to achieve "pollution free" production and the recycling of resources.

If this is true, the Shifang government should have provided the relevant information to the public to let them weigh the potential benefits and costs and make their own decisions. Otherwise, it's highly likely that the Shifang incident will be repeated elsewhere.

The construction of projects that bear on the environment is a sensitive issue in all countries. And mass protests against such projects also happen in the US, Japan and Europe.

That said, the incident in Shifang must not be neglected. It needs to be especially stressed that violent enforcement should be avoided when dealing with friction between the public and government. Otherwise, friction might escalate into serious confrontation and therefore hurt the image of the government.

The author is director of the School of Public Administration at Renmin University in Beijing. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

 



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