ID: 1841
Presenting Author: Liwen Zhan
Session: 598 - Engaging Communities: Digital Storytelling for Trustworthy IA
Status: pending
Our research delves into China's macro environmental regulation system and analyzes its openness, data visibility, and public participation pattern, demonstrating its value in digital IA era.
One of the most distinctive features of China’s EIA system distinguishes it from others is public participation. The 2002 EIA Law established a mechanism for public participation, enabling citizens to engage directly in environmental governance. Within over 40 years of China's EIA system’s development, since 2017, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has established the Eco-environmental Zoning-based Regulation system, consolidating nationwide coverage of environmental data across various sources, departments, scales, and elements into a single platform.
To expand the comprehensiveness, coordination, fairness, and equilibrium of sectoral and regional development, during the process of building this system, cross-regional, multi-sectoral, and public opinions were solicited multiple times. After the first-round of this work was completed, a public-accessible as well as corporate-accessible version was released on the internet. The result integrates complex environmental issues into a concise, easy-to-understand, and intuitive "three-color map", as well as transforming the "instruction manuals" corresponding to the map for environmental protection during high-quality development into a searchable checklist aligned with the plots on the map.
This system is open to society and provides a platform for public understanding of environmental protection and resource utilization, safeguarding the right of all stakeholders to be informed about environmental issues, while also mobilizing the power of various social groups to participate in environmental governance.
Liwen Zhan, an EIA engineer, specializes in assessing macro-environmental policy impacts and holds a CFA ESG certificate, dedicated to embedding sustainability in professional practice.