【XWBOO Enterprise News】Recently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has selected a number of typical cases emerging from major reforms, key projects and important policies, and major special work in the field of ecology and environment for reference. Among them, the [Environmental Credit Evaluation] chapter has been serialised since October 1, 2022, and eight cases have been made public so far.
Environmental credit evaluation, I believe enterprises are no stranger to it. China has announced the Measures for Environmental Credit Evaluation of Enterprises (for Trial Implementation) since the end of 2013, and in November 2019, a nationally unified credit platform for environmental impact evaluation was launched. This year, the Opinions on Promoting the Construction of a High-Quality Social Credit System to Promote the Formation of a New Development Pattern also re-emphasised the need to improve the ecological and environmental protection credit system.
At the same time, major breakthroughs have been made in the exploration of environmental credit supervision models that have been started one after another around the world. From 2013 to 2021, according to incomplete statistics from 12 provinces (cities), including Hebei, Liaoning, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, a total of more than 740,000 (times) enterprises have been evaluated. It is reported that 21 indicators have been included in the evaluation system, and Gansu even has 27, and the environmental credit evaluation indicator system with characteristics around the world is gradually taking shape. The environmental credit supervision system is also becoming more and more perfect, evaluation information and results interoperability sharing or further open up the credit supervision path across regions.
"Although the evaluation criteria have greater variability around the world, but its content basically covers the performance of enterprises in pollution prevention and control, ecological protection, environmental management, social supervision and other aspects of environmental behavior, if enterprises want to get better environmental credit evaluation results, they need to effectively improve their environmental behavior against the environmental credit evaluation indicators, improve the level of pollution management, and strictly comply with ecological and environmental Laws and regulations."
--Li Xuan, Associate Researcher, Centre for Environmental and Economic Policy Research, Ministry of Ecology and Environment
What are the implications if environmental credit is poor?
Financing, approvals, public services, all of these are now very directly related to environmental credit, and can even be linked to market costs, including various ecological and environmental protection licensing matters, the issuance of special funds, scientific and technological projects, merit assessment and award activities, towards the result of "the law-abiding benefits" to force companies to be trustworthy. In contrast, those who are trustworthy in environmental protection can actually enjoy real benefits.
So, can companies that fail to protect the environment still "save themselves"?
Of course, the "red light" is not the purpose, supervision and guidance is. Environmental credit repair is a new mechanism explored by the state to correct the mistakes of enterprises, in conjunction with environmental credit evaluation and supervision, to create a closed loop of environmental credit ecology. The typical cases shared by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment involve local practices in this area.
Jiangsu, for example, has set up a green, blue, yellow, red and black environmental credit marker system, implemented a differential water and electricity pricing policy, used credit discipline to urge enterprises to comply with the law, and allowed them to apply for credit repair to upgrade or restore their credit rating. It is reported that Nantong City has also improved the green credit mechanism and implemented differentiated management for enterprises with declining environmental credit evaluation results caused by occasional factors, setting up a "buffer zone" for minor credit failures.
In Fujian, for example, the provincial public credit information platform synchronises the environmental credit evaluation results. For enterprises that fail to comply with the credit, the relevant local departments will take a series of measures to help them rectify the situation, including policy interpretation and guidance. The enterprises' applications for credit repair will be verified by the local authorities, reviewed and the rectification and disciplinary period confirmed, and the information confirming the credit repair will also be synchronised on the platform.
"We have found after research and analysis that most of the enterprises that have lost credit, do not know enough about the policies related to environmental credit repair, resulting in the enterprises failing to take the initiative to correct the breach of trust. There are also some enterprises, which do not know how to carry out environmental credit repair, and some of them do not even know that some of their environmental violations have constituted environmental breach of trust", said the relevant personnel of the Jiangxi Yichun Ecological Environment Bureau.
Against this backdrop, it is even more urgent that environmental credit repair work be carried out. Xue Fang, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Credit Association and researcher at the Credit Legislation and Credit Assessment Research Center of Capital Normal University, also said that China, as the world's largest market player, should accurately paint a "credit risk portrait" of enterprises in key areas such as ecology and environmental protection to achieve precise supervision, key supervision, source supervision and credit supervision.
Credit repair has "strength", credit repair has "temperature", credit repair has "speed", credit repair has "breadth "The requirements of the mechanism of "special promotion, active service, collaborative linkage and enhanced publicity" for credit repair in Heilongjiang have been comprehensively summarised. Let the trustworthy get a green card, benefit, reduce pressure, this is the original intention of the implementation of the environmental credit repair mechanism.
