On November 8, The European Chamber in Shanghai held an SME seminar on Environmental compliance.
In the past few years, pollution and environmental degradation have been steadily increasing. In 2005, the degradation of crops and marine products and the health effects of pollution are estimated to have costed the PRC economy between 5 and 12 % of GDP. This has led the government to recently step up its efforts to control pollution and to strengthen environmental regulations.
At this seminar, St茅phane Gasne from Gide Loyrette Nouel presented the institutions in charge of regulating and overseeing environmental compliance. He described the various laws relevant for environmental compliance and in particular the Environmental Protection Law of 1989 which constitutes the main legal framework for pollution control. He also went through the legal steps, necessary at the pre-construction, construction and operation stage of a project which may result in environmental pollution. His presentation ended with a description of the environmental liabilities in case of non-compliance and with some recommendations on how to manage environmental risks.
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In his presentation, Frederik Cornu from Bureau Veritas dealt with ways to comply with environmental laws in practice. He detailed the precise legal and administrative requirements at each stage of an industrial project. He then engaged the audience into a fruitful discussion over the need to comply or not with environmental regulations. His colleague, Faith Chen, presented some of the steps such as systems certification (ISO 14000,...) that a company could take beyond environmental compliance.
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Both presentations were followed by a lively Q&A session.