Introduction

China is one of the earliest countries that implemented EIA. The EIA system has gradually evolved with the development of the environmental management system and the environmental protection legal system. Since the promulgation of the Interim Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China in 1979, EIA was stipulated as a legal system. Thereafter, it has been further developed through a continious improvement and legislating process with the Government taking a leading role. The practice of Regional Environmental Impact Assessment (REIA) has already early initiated the implementation of strategic assessment. The EIA Law from 2002 marks a milestone in the systematic and legal development of EIA and SEA in China. It extented the objectives of EIA for construction projects to strategic development plans, providing the basis for Plan EIA (PEIA), the principal form of SEA in China. Nowadays, a complex system of regulations, statutes, ordinances, directives and technical guidelines regulate the EIA and PEIA process. In 2014, the revised Environmental Protection Law was promulgated. It provides for better conditions for enforcing EIA provisions and it requires EIA for economical and technical policies, thus it firstly mentions an SEA-like procedure.

In China, the main managment agencies of EIA are the competent authorities of environmental protection at central level (Ministry of Environmental Protection) as well as at the local level (local Environmental Protection Bureaus).


News

UNESCO, IUCN and NCEA start cooperation to strengthen World Heritage protection

Webpages | 15-01-2024

UNESCO, IUCN and NCEA start cooperation to strengthen World Heritage protection

UNESCO, IUCN, and the NCEA have signed an agreement to reinforce capacity building and quality assurance for Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs)…

Expert meeting sustainable infrastructure

Webpages | 01-11-2018

Expert meeting sustainable infrastructure

How can infrastructure contribute to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in particular to SDG 9 on infrastructure?

Workshop in China: exchanging SEA experiences

Webpages | 25-01-2017

Workshop in China: exchanging SEA experiences

Together with the Chinese Appraisal Center for Environmental Engineering (ACEE), the NCEA organised a workshop in China (5-6 December). For two days,…

Review of EIA scoping report for coal fired power plant in Ghana

Webpages | 18-02-2016

Review of EIA scoping report for coal fired power plant in Ghana

The NCEA reviewed a scoping report for an EIA that is prepared to support the Ghanaian government’s decision-making on a coal fired power plant.…

Publication on SEA effectiveness in China and the Netherlands

Webpages | 16-12-2014

Publication on SEA effectiveness in China and the Netherlands

In the past three years there has been an ongoing exchange on SEA between China and the Netherlands. One of the products of this co-operation was…

NCEA contributions to SEA workshop in Beijing

Webpages | 16-12-2014

NCEA contributions to SEA workshop in Beijing

As part of cooperation activities on SEA between China and the Netherlands, the NCEA contributed to a 2-day workshop on SEA for urban planning (see…

NCEA at South Asian conference on impact assessmennt

Webpages | 09-12-2013

NCEA at South Asian conference on impact assessmennt

“This Conference has ignited considerable interest in the subject of environmental assessment, and today we are reaffirming our pledge to work more…