Managing unseen pollution focus of environmental plan

China’s environmental plan during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period signals a new stage in which the country’s green governance is moving to the management of more complex environmental risks.

It does not mean the battle for blue skies, clear waters and clean soil is over. Rather, future progress will depend more on early detection, full-chain supervision and long-term risk control.

From monitoring networks to soil, groundwater, rural environments and solid waste, future environmental progress will increasingly depend on the ability to detect, trace and manage risks before they become obvious problems, according to the plan issued jointly by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and other relevant departments.

One clear signal comes from China’s aim to make important progress in establishing a modern monitoring system by 2030. The validity rate of automatic monitoring data is expected to rise from 95 percent in 2025 to 98 percent in 2030, while the intelligent level of operation, maintenance and key-indicator testing is set to reach 70 percent. The plan also calls for stronger monitoring of new pollutants, heavy metals, greenhouse gases and ecological problems.

Earlier policies largely addressed visible pollution, such as smog, polluted rivers and black and odorous water bodies. The problems receiving greater policy attention now — soil contamination at industrial sites, groundwater pollution, solid waste facilities, data falsification by polluters, and ecological degradation in remote areas — are harder to see and slower to unfold. Without a stronger monitoring system, these risks will go undetected until it becomes too expensive to reverse them.

The new plan sets a target of raising the safe utilization rate of contaminated farmland from about 93 percent in 2025 to more than 95 percent by 2030, and increasing the proportion of groundwater of good quality from 74.3 percent to more than 78 percent.

It also aims to lift the rural domestic sewage treatment rate from 55 percent to 70 percent and implement environmental improvement projects in 80,000 villages.

These targets point to a broader definition of environmental quality. While clean air in cities remains important, people’s environmental expectations now include safe food, secure drinking water and livable rural surroundings. Soil and groundwater pollution can affect health, food safety and land redevelopment, yet they are often difficult to detect and costly to remedy. That is why the new plan emphasizes source prevention, risk control for redevelopment sites, heavy metal tracing in farmland and countywide progress in building beautiful villages.

China generates more than 11 billion metric tons of solid waste each year and has about 30 billion tons of historically stored industrial solid waste. The new plan calls for the effective control of the historical stockpiles by 2030, along with the curbing of illegal dumping and disposal, and the building of an information-based regulatory network covering key fields.

The plan also sets measurable targets for the share of hazardous waste disposed of through landfill, which should be cut from about 13 percent in 2025 to no more than 10 percent by 2030, while the share of key general industrial solid waste stored or landfilled should fall from about 56 percent to no more than 30 percent. Full-process information-based supervision is expected to cover all entities related to hazardous waste.

Hidden environmental risks are hard to detect and eradicate, they require reliable data, interdepartmental coordination, local enforcement, stable funding and the long-term operation of environmental infrastructure.

The new environmental plan suggests that China’s environmental agenda is becoming more systematic. The next stage will be about building the institutions, data systems and risk-control mechanisms needed to prevent deeper environmental problems from emerging.