10On the 16th of the month, the People's Government of Guangdong Province issued the revised "Emergency Plan for Sudden Environmental Incidents in Guangdong Province" (hereinafter referred to as the new "Plan"), which was released on the provincial government's website yesterday. Compared with the "Emergency Plan for Sudden Environmental Incidents in Guangdong Province" (2012 version) (hereinafter referred to as the old "Plan"), the new "Plan" that started revision work two years ago has added specific indicators for general event grading, more complete grading standards, and clearer division of responsibilities among relevant units.

Added specific indicators for general event grading

The reporter compared the old "Plan" and found that the new "Plan" has revised the event grading standards from the aspects of personnel casualties, economic losses, ecological environment damage, radiation pollution, and social impact within the framework of the "National Emergency Plan for Environmental Emergencies", and the event grading standards are more complete. The new 'Plan' has added specific indicators for general event grading, taking into account factors such as casualties, evacuation numbers, economic losses, and cross-border impacts. At the same time, the number of casualties has been increased, from 10 or more directly caused by environmental pollution in the particularly severe level to 30, and the number of casualties caused by environmental pollution in other levels has also been adjusted accordingly. In addition, the grading standards related to radiation pollution have been further adjusted and standardized.

In terms of the scope of application of the contingency plan, the new "contingency plan" stipulates that it is applicable to the response to sudden environmental incidents within the administrative area of Guangdong Province. This is a significant adjustment compared to the old 'Plan' which only emphasized the intervention and response at the provincial level. The scope of application of the plan is more clear, reflecting the policy nature of the provincial emergency environmental event plan and its guidance for various regions in the province.

Redefine sudden environmental events

The new "Emergency Plan" redefines sudden environmental incidents based on the "National Emergency Plan for Sudden Environmental Incidents", which refers to incidents where pollutants or toxic and harmful substances such as radioactive substances enter the atmosphere, water bodies, soil and other environmental media due to pollutant emissions, natural disasters, production safety accidents and other factors, suddenly causing or potentially causing a decline in environmental quality, endangering public health and property safety, or causing ecological and environmental damage, or causing significant social impact, requiring emergency measures to be taken to respond. It mainly includes sudden environmental pollution events such as atmospheric pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, and radiation pollution events.

The Guangdong Provincial Department of Environmental Protection emphasized in the "Compilation Explanation" that the definition has added a description and definition of the causes of sudden environmental events, and listed the situations that trigger and secondary sudden environmental events.

In addition, in the definition, it is explicitly stated that "suddenly causing or potentially causing" includes both "sudden outbreak" and "sudden discovery". Including both sudden pollution and some cumulative pollution in the scope of sudden environmental incidents reflects the country's bottom line thinking on environmental safety, which is conducive to minimizing the environmental impact of events to the greatest extent possible. (Full media reporter Fang Qing)

(Editor in charge: Wang Jia)