Putting China’s Water Pollution Action Plan into Action

While air pollution is serious in China, worsening water quality of lakes, rivers, and groundwater is perhaps a larger challenge. In April 2015, China’s State Council issued the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan—a comprehensive water policy with strict targets that aims to break down silos between government agencies to reduce water pollution, particularly from industries.  CEF with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will host U.S. and Chinese environmental protection officials, local level experts, and NGOs for a discussion of innovative policies, coordination and management best practices, and public-private partnerships that could help China put its Water Pollution Action Plan into action.  Some of our speakers and audience members will be in Washington DC for meetings of the U.S.-China Joint Committee on Environmental Cooperation, which for 35 years has promoted bilateral cooperation between the U.S. EPA and China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection on water management and pollution prevention.  

Following a brief introduction of China’s Water Action Plan by Yingmin Zhao (Director-General Ministry of Environmental Protection, Department of Pollution Prevention and Control) and the U.S.-China bilateral water partnership under the Strategic & Economic Dialogues by Sasha Koo-Oshima (Director of US-China Clean Water Action Plan and EPA Lead on International Water Program), five speakers will make short comments to catalyze discussion. 

The short presentations and discussion will have simultaneous English-Chinese translation. 

To view film of Nanming He Project - a US-China Water Forum-Case Study of Public-Private Partnerships - presented by Mr. Hongtao Pang, please click here.  (Photo of Thouand Island Lake,  by Riku Lu / Flickr)