China's Ministry of Finance announced Monday that the central government has allocated 5 billion yuan ($817 million) for rewarding air pollution treatment efforts in six provincial regions surrounding the capital.

The fund will be used in six provincial regions and municipalities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shandong and Shanxi to conduct integrated treatment.

Being used as awards instead of subsidies, the fund will be distributed based on a year-end performance evaluation of each region's pollution control works, which features amount of reduction, investment in pollution control, and the decline ratio in PM 2.5 concentration - a particulate which contributes the most to the serious smog in the area. 

The policy could help implement the Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013-17) released in September by the State Council, which set the most stringent air pollution control target in five years, Wang Tao, a scholar of climate research with Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, told the Global Times.

An effective system to urge local officials to make air pollution treatment among their top priorities, which contains a strict accountability mechanism, matters more than funds, Wang noted.

Zhao Zhangyuan, a researcher fellow with the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, also took a wait-and-see attitude toward the fund's impact, arguing that environmental funds have been known to be embezzled and failed to meet the goals due to lack of supervision, while some local officials would massage the data.

"Besides governmental supervision, independent environmental evaluation organizations make up an important force and they also need funds to carry out performance evaluation on local governments to ensure their efficacy," Zhao added.