Determination of water environment standards based on water quality criteria in China: Limitations and feasibilities.

There is a need to formulate water environment standards (WESs) from the current water quality criteria (WQC) in China. To this end, we briefly summarize typical mechanisms applied in several countries with longer histories of developing WESs, and three limitations to formulating WESs in China were identified. After analyzing the feasibility factors including economic development, scientific support capability and environmental policies, we realized that China is still not ready for a complete change from its current nation-wide unified WES system to a local-standard-based system. Thus, we proposed a framework for transformation from WQC to WESs in China. The framework consists of three parts, including responsibilities, processes and policies. The responsibilities include research authorization, development of guidelines, and collection of information, at both national and local levels; the processes include four steps and an impact factor system to establish water quality standards; and the policies include seven specific proposals.

[Mechanism for transformation of environmental criteria into environmental standards in China].

In order to provide scientific basis for developing more reasonable and effective environmental standards (ESs), China has taken its own environmental criteria (EC) research strategy in recent years. For the purpose of developing a transformation mechanism from EC to ESs suitable for China, current EC and ESs in China were compared with those in some developed countries, such as the USA, Canada and Australia. Four common characteristics of transformation from EC to ESs in developed countries and corresponding problems in China were drawn through the comparison, based on which a framework for transformation from EC to ESs was established. The framework was composed by three parts: (1) relevant national and local agencies and responsibilities; (2) steps for transformation including affecting factors and their interactions; (3) and policies for solving current problems in China.