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State Environmental Protection Administration SEPA
The government of China has appointed SEPA as executing
agency of the Program Policy Advisory Service and Environmental Management
for Enterprises.
| SEPA was founded in 1974 as National
Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA). The NEPA was the leading agency
for environmental protection at the State Council. In 1982 it became
subordinated to the Ministry for urban construction and environmental
protection. In 1987 it was transformed into a self-contained authority
and became directly subordinated to the State Council. |
At this point NEPA became the secretariat of the state environmental
protection commission at the State Council. In this commission all ministries
and commissions relevant to environmental protection matters were included.
According to Article 7 of the environmental protection law the overall
responsibility for environmental planning and protection was with this
commission.
NEPA was the executing agency of this commission and had to
report to the commission and the State Council. The position of the director
of SEPA was upgraded in March 1998 to that of a minister. At the same
time the agency NEPA was upgraded to an administration under the name
SEPA.
According to article 26 of 1989 SEPA is responsible for:
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Drafting of environmental
laws, regulations and standards and organizing their implementation; |
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National planning; |
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Environmental impact
assessment; |
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Environmental education. |
SEPA is consisting of nine departments with a total of 220
employees:
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Administrative Office |
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Department of Planning and Finance |
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Department of Policies, Laws and
Regulations |
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Department of Human Resources
and Institutional Affairs |
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Department of Science, Technology
and Standards |
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Department of Pollution Control |
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Department of Nature and Ecology
Conservation |
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Department of Nuclear Safety and
Radioactive Management |
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Department of Supervision and
Management |
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Department of International Cooperation |
Also, six research centers and seven education facilities
are directly subordinated to SEPA. The Environmental Protection Bureaus
(EPB) are technically supervised and partly also financed by SEPA.
Through the State Council and the Council for International
Cooperation on Environment (CCICED) SEPA is well involved in environmental
policy decisions at the national level. It has a central coordinating
function in the preparation of those decisions, in the development of
new instruments and in the environmental law making. But the access to
the industry and other players that cause environmental damage is limited,
since they are subordinated to different ministries or structures, but
not directly subordinated to SEPA.
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