Related norms of the ENGOs, one vital role in environmental improvement needed to be enhanced in China.

Four behavior subjects, including governments, enterprises, and public and environmental non-government organizations (abbreviated as ENGOs), all play vital roles in environmental protection. As an important component, the ENGOs of all the world focus on environmental improvement and provide services for the whole society. In developed countries, the ENGOs have been formed earlier, and all kinds of regulation, supervision, and maintenance systems on the organizations are relatively mature. The development of the ENGOs in China started late, but the development speed was very fast. Some issues, including the exploring on their existing situation and how to promote their role in environmental protection, should be concerned. In total, 2510 ENGOs' information in China was collected and analyzed in the study. The ENGOs in the nation were not uniformly distributed, and there were great differences in the number of the ENGOs among the 34 provinces of China. With a few exceptions, the ENGOs in China were generally small in the scale and poor in the viability. They were mostly research-oriented and often less participating. The organizations' development and improvement still needed a long-term arduous course. Many negative factors might influence the sustainable and healthy development of the ENGOs in China, and the legislation might be one cause. Several aspects-related norms, including the registration system, the financial support mechanism, and the identification on their plaintiff qualification, needed to be improved to encourage the development of these organizations and then promote the improvement of environmental quality better in China.

The improvement on the implementation level of environmental policies is demanded in China.

So far, on the national level, 52 environmental laws, 266 environmental regulations and rules, and 983 environment standards have been issued in China from 1979. However, environmental qualities are still far away from the goals of environmental policies. The implementation process of environmental policies might be one of the key negative reasons. The implementation of environmental policies in local agencies remained at a rather low level not matching the demands corresponding to the rapid development of economy in the nation. A significant improvement of environmental conditions could be achieved if proper environmental protection policies are executed completely and local agencies are active in their administrative, supervising, and educational responsibilities.

Analysis of Surface Water Pollution Accidents in China: Characteristics and Lessons for Risk Management.

Understanding historical accidents is important for accident prevention and risk mitigation; however, there are no public databases of pollution accidents in China, and no detailed information regarding such incidents is readily available. Thus, 653 representative cases of surface water pollution accidents in China were identified and described as a function of time, location, materials involved, origin, and causes. The severity and other features of the accidents, frequency and quantities of chemicals involved, frequency and number of people poisoned, frequency and number of people affected, frequency and time for which pollution lasted, and frequency and length of pollution zone were effectively used to value and estimate the accumulated probabilities. The probabilities of occurrences of various types based on origin and causes were also summarized based on these observations. The following conclusions can be drawn from these analyses: (1) There was a high proportion of accidents involving multi-district boundary regions and drinking water crises, indicating that more attention should be paid to environmental risk prevention and the mitigation of such incidents. (2) A high proportion of accidents originated from small-sized chemical plants, indicating that these types of enterprises should be considered during policy making. (3) The most common cause (49.8% of the total) was intentional acts (illegal discharge); accordingly, efforts to increase environmental consciousness in China should be enhanced.