China has just unveiled its five-year action plan that targets the air quality of the nation’s cities.
The new plan, called “Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan,” was made to tackle the nation’s worsening air pollution problem by significantly improving the air quality of China’s 338 cities, according to China Daily.
Under the action plan – which spans 2013 to 2017 – concentration levels of breathable suspended particles that are 10 microns in size must fall by at least 10 percent by 2017 from the levels in 2012.
However, for some key areas, such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional cluster, concentration levels of particulate matter that are 2.5 microns in size must be cut by 25 percent by 2017 from the 2012 level. For the Yangtze River Delta region and the Pearl River Delta region, there needs to be a reduction of 20 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
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“But this does not mean that controlling PM2.5 is not important in the other regions, as PM2.5 particles account for 50 to 60 percent of PM10 particles,” said Wang Jian, deputy head of the Pollution Prevention and Control Department at the Environmental Protection Ministry.
The new action plan is an updated version of the one released last year which had a goal of reducing PM2.5 levels in three key areas by 6 percent by 2015, based on 2010 levels. But because of the growing consensus that a tougher approach is needed to address the problem of air pollution, the current action plan was released.
“The new action plan will bring real improvements to our air quality. Residents will feel the change,” said Mr. Wang.
Measures under the new plan include: bringing pollutants under control; negative coal consumption in several regions; accelerating the process of monitoring and disclosing PM2.5 readings; extending monitoring from 119 county-level cities to all 338 before 2015; and banning heavily polluting motor vehicles from the streets by 2017. – EcoSeed Staff
