Narrow Results

Radio-Ecology Study to Improve Future Environmental Risk Assessment.

Biotechnology Applied to Treat Water Pollution.

Progress in Male Sterility Gene Research.

Malaria Vaccine Modeled Against Parasitic Antigen.

Soy Extract May Benefit Early-Staged Prostate Cancer Patients.

This study examines whether better environmental performance of a firm facilitates its access to bank loans in China and how state ownership and regional environmental pollution moderate this relationship. Using a sample of Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2015, we find that better environmental performance is associated with greater access to bank loans, which is consistent with the predictions of risk-management theory. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between environmental performance and access to bank loans is weakened for state-owned firms and strengthened for firms operating in the regions with higher environmental pollution, suggesting that institutional factors play an important role when banks make lending decisions. Our results have implications for managers, policymakers, and banks in the transition to a green economy.

In May 2017, Department of Science, Technology and Standards, MEP, China held the first training conference of “2017 CCUS environmental risk assessment technology”. After the conference, specially designed questionnaires were sent to the participants so as to collect the professional opinions to improve the guideline in the next revision. Basic information of participants, knowledge of capture, utilization and geological storage (CCUS), and attitude to the CCUS environmental risk are contained in the questionnaires. The 82 questionnaires were issued to the participants, and 77 valid questionnaires were collected with the response rate of 93.9%. According to the data mining, (a) nearly one third of the participants had not heard of the CCUS before the training; (b) the attitude to CCUS environmental impact and risk is influenced by the knowledge of CCUS; (c) the severities of the three aspects of capture component are medium; (d) for onshore CCUS projects, underground water, atmosphere, soil, and human health were considered the highest sensitivity receptors; (e) the enterprises were very concerned of the CCUS environmental management policies, three most important policies were conducting environmental monitoring across the whole chain, clarifying the environmental management responsibilities, and establishing emergency plans for environmental accidents. The result of this survey would provide the guidance for the improvement of the technical guideline which planned to be released during the official version in 2020.

From the beginning of the reform and open door policy period, in 1978, to the present moment, China has consistently subordinated the importance of environmental protection to the pursuit of rapid economic growth in the name of constructing a socialist modernized state. Remarkable achievements in economic development have been made in the last three decades, and people's living standards, in material terms, have been vastly improved, but China has paid a very heavy price, in environmental terms, for such gains. Confronted with a widening spectrum of problems manifesting rapid environmental deterioration, major initiatives and measures have been repeatedly undertaken by the Central government to improve the efficacy of the country's environment protection apparatus. This chapter reviews the challenges encountered, and progress made, in the field of environmental protection, tracing the impacts of rapid industrial and urban growth on the country's environmental contours and ecological landscape. We argue that, despite of the pro-environment actions undertaken by the Central government, the prospect for a quick reversal of the current trends of environmental degradation remains slim because such efforts have always been resisted or even negated by local governments bent on pursuing economic growth at the cost of environmental protection. Unless China's political culture is reformed to allow a greater degree of transparency in local governance matters and that the implementation of environmental policies and programs is effectively and vastly strengthened, the country will be hard pressed to achieve even its modest environmental targets in the foreseeable future.