Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering, 2013, 2, 69-72
doi:10.4236/cweee.2013.22B012 Published Online April 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/cweee)
Considerations on Research of Environmental Risk
Prevention and Control in “12th Five-Year Plan” Period
Pengli Xue1, Xiaofeng Sun1, Yun Song1, Yanjun Cheng1, Dezhi Sun2
1Environmental Protection Institute of Light Industry, Beijing, China
2Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China
Received 2013
ABSTRACT
Along with the environmental pollution causes complexity and diversity increases ceaselessly, “national environmental
protection” Twelfth Five “planning” (hereinafter referred to as “planning”) will be the environmental risk prevention as
the “12th Five-Year Plan” one of the important tasks, including advancing environmental risk management in the whole
process, key areas the environmental risk prevention measures. The whole process environmental risk management
covers a risk source recognition, receptor vulnerability assessment, environmental risk characterization, risk decision
and risk assessment of accident loss. This article from the environmental risk source classification, environmental risk
classification management, environmental emergency response and environmental risk and insurance environment four
aspects put forward the “12th Five-Year Plan” whole process environmental risk management content, to further reduce
our country environmental pollution accident risk and policy makers to provide some decision support.
Keywords: Whole-process Environmental Risk Assessment and Management; Environmental Risk Source Stage
Division; Environmental Risk Regionalization; Emergency Management; Environment Insurance
1. Introduction
In recent years, along with the rapid advance of China’s
industrialization and urbanization, the density of population
and economy increase sharply; meanwhile, the chemical
enterprises are gathering towards the major riverside and
seaside cities with the convenient transportation and re-
sources, therefore leading to the enormous and sudden
environmental risks caused by the improper distribution.
The production, storage and transportation of dangerous
materials of chemical enterprises are on the rise, which
results in the frequent environmental pollution accidents
of China. Based on the analysis of the dynamic change in
time and space of environmental pollution accidents from
1990 to 2007, Xue (2011) points that China’s sudden
environmental pollution accidents decrease from 3.462
(1990) to 462 (2007) thanks to the release of a series of
management rules on poisonous, harmful and dangerous
chemicals, the implementation of evaluation system of
safety production and environmental impact, and the
issuance of technical guide for environmental risk evalua-
tion of projects, especially the stricter environment su-
pervision of risk enterprises. Seen from the spatial dis-
tribution characteristics, China’s sudden environmental
pollution accidents in the past ten years mainly came
from the Yangtze River Delta and Liaodong Peninsula;
however, with the implementation of the western devel-
opment strategy, the exhaustion of eastern environmental
capacity and the industrial upgrading, many heavily pol-
luting enterprises begins moving to the west, and the
enterprises specialized in paper making, coal chemicals
and heavy metals smelting have become the major risk
sources of western areas; the environmental risk caused by
improper distribution and the soar of regional industri-
alization and urbanization result in the continuous in-
crease in environmental pollution accident loss of China.
As the cause of environmental pollution is more and
more complicated and diversified, the National 12th Five-
Year Plan for Environmental Protection (hereinafter called
the Plan), for the first time, lists the environmental risk
prevention as an important task in the “12th Five-Year
Plan” period which is parallel to the total emission re-
duction and quality control, and makes decisions to pro-
mote the whole-process risk management, improve the
environmental risk management measures and establish
the mechanism of environmental accident damage and
compensation.
2. Risk Source Classification/Gradation
Management
The classification of environmental risk source is the
premise for risk identification; after the classification, it
is necessary to establish the grading standard system for
each kind of environmental risk source to assess the
hazard of risk source and further ascertain the grade of

P. L. XUE ET AL.
70
environmental risk source, and then work out the monitor-
ing and management measures against each grade of
environmental risk source, especially the major ones. In
this way, the environmental risk can be reduced from the
source,
To comprehensively master the spatial distribution and
hazard level of the fixed environmental risk sources of
China, identify the major risk sources, and provide basic
information for the establishment of China’s regional en-
vironmental risk source files and database, the Ministry
of Environmental Protection, in May 2009, carried out
the environmental risk and chemicals inspection on the
enterprises of 3 national key sectors (petroleum process-
ing and coking, chemical material and product manufac-
ture and medicine manufacturing), totaling 10 industries
and 35 sub-industries. In a sense, the enterprises of 35
sub-industries involved in this inspection belongs to the
environmental risk sources defined according to the
industry characteristics classification, with each enterprise
equivalent to one environmental risk source. However,
the relevant research by Wei Keji et al. (2010) summa-
rizes the classification of environmental risk source into
the followings: the environmental sufferer-based classifi-
cation, such as the water environment risk source, atmos-
pheric environment risk source and soil environment risk
source; the material state-based classification, such as the
gaseous environment risk source, liquid environment risk
source and solid environment risk source; the transmis-
sion route-based classification. Wen Lili et al. (2010)
presented the design principle of major environmental
risk source monitoring system based on the classification
into liquid source, solid source and mobile source.
The environmental risk source gradation management
aims to effectively avoid risk of each grade of environ-
ment risk of the same category; the risk source gradation
management can save the management cost and shorten
the emergency response time, therefore enhancing the
efficiency of risk management. Wei Keji (2010) built the
environment hazard index according to the hazard of risk
source to water, atmosphere and soil to divide the risk
sources into four grades, and then presented the identifi-
cation standard system of major environmental risk
source according to the said gradation.
Many industries in the various categories of national
economy have the environmental risk and it is hard to
make the uniform classification and assessment, therefore,
the chemical raw materials/products manufacturing in-
dustry or the chemical industry park shall be chosen for
the initial research on the environmental risk source assess-
ment and gradation management standards, and we shall
work out the prevention and early warning measures
against the major risk source of such industry in aspect of
technology transformation, equipment elimination, per-
sonnel training, etc. with a purpose to eliminate the major
petrochemical environmental pollution accidents at their
early stage.
As to the VOCs pollution risk, source tracing and
characteristics of industrial VOCs emissions in China
should pay more attention to the production of VOCs, the
storage and transport, industrial processes using VOCs as
raw materials and use of VOCs-containing products.
3. Research on Vulnerability of
Environmental Risk Targets
From the point of region, the environmental risk sufferer
is a compound system including the social economy, natural
ecology and other factors, so the object suffering the sud-
den environmental pollution accident risk includes the
social economy and ecosystem, and the integrated vul-
nerability of risk sufferer is composed of the vulnerabil-
ity of social economy and that of ecosystem.
For the social economic system, we mainly consider
the scale of regional population and economy, the re-
gional accident prevention and emergency measures, the
scale of other infrastructures and so on; for the natural
ecosystem, we mainly consider the sensitive ecosystem,
including the ecosystem of drinking water source area,
natural reserve and wetland.
During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, we shall re-
search the vulnerability of social environmental risk suf-
ferer through such aspects as population density, the
density of hospital and urban lifeline, regional early-
warning capacity, proportion of public education in GDP,
number of hospital bed per 10,000 persons, per capita
GDP, regional emergency evacuation capacity, sudden
environmental pollution accident response capacity and
prevention capacity, etc. and figure out the pertinent and
practical measures to isolate risks or enhance the risk
resistance capacity for the much vulnerable social risk
sufferers; the research on vulnerability of natural eco-
logical environmental risk suffer shall be carried out
through the sensitivity and adaptability of regional eco-
system (including water area ratio, regional environ-
mental improvement index, river regulation investment
ratio, standard discharge rate of industrial wastewater)
and related to the regional emergency monitoring and
response to effectively reduce the damage caused by the
ecosystem pollution accident.
4. Environmental Risk Zoning Management
At present, the Emergency Response Law of the People’s
Republic of China is lack of the relevant implementing
rules, there is no adequate legal basis for implementation
and the relevant supporting policies are not formulated
yet, so there is no pertinent guide on the prevention and
management of environment risk. During the “12th Five-
Year Plan” period, we shall, based on the classification

P. L. XUE ET AL. 71
and gradation of environmental risk source, comprehend-
sively consider the environmental risk sufferer to realize
the regionalization for environmental risk in the major
industries, such as the petrochemical industry, and regard
it as the important basis for the environmental risk zon-
ing management.
The environmental risk regionalization is the basis and
prerequisite for the environmental risk zoning manage-
ment. At present, the method and theoretical system of
China’s environmental risk regionalization are still in the
research phase, and the environmental risk zoning man-
agement is not implemented in any specific administra-
tive and regional system yet.
Yang Jie et al. (2006) took the economic zone along
Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province as an example wherein a
single development zone is regarded as the research unit
to analyze the risk source, control mechanism and suf-
ferer, and obtained the comprehensive risk index of each
industrial park, which was then made into different
grades, and finally they presented the corresponding risk
management measures. Peng Wangminzi (2009) ana-
lyzed the characteristics of each risk source of a certain
petrochemical industrial source in Guangzhou and then
assessed the environmental risk though the information
diffusion method; on the basis of this, he divided the en-
vironmental risk of industrial park into four grades ac-
cording to the relevant grading standard. Xue Pengli
(2011) adopted the top-down and bottom-up method to
regionalize the sudden environment risk of Shanghai and
got 2 risk regions, 5 risk sub-regions and 21 risk seg-
ments; meanwhile she presented accident prevention and
early-warning measures for different types of risk areas,
realizing the environmental risk zoning management in
Shanghai.
In order to further prevent the environmental risk
caused by the improper industrial distribution during the
“12th Five-Year Plan” period, we shall, based on the
environment function zoning, ecological zoning and
main function zoning of our country, further consider the
environmental risk source, the vulnerability of social
environment and ecological environment sufferer in a
comprehensive manner to assess the environmental risk
and obtain the environmental risk zoning map, and then
analyze this map together with the land use plan of China
and the overall urban planning map to strengthen the
space regulation and provide the objective and visual
basis for the adjustment of industrial structure and layout,
the reasonable layout and development of industries with
high risk of serious pollution and the implementation of
risk prevention measures, with a purpose to actually re-
alize the environmental risk zoning management.
Based on the current and future industrial emissions of
VOCs in China, the research on the risk zoning for the
air pollution can provides scientific results for control the
VOCs pollution.
5. Environmental Risk and Environmental
Insurance
The environmental insurance is an effective green insur-
ance system against the pollution issues which is widely
adopted in the world and aims to compensate for the
personal injury and properly loss of the third party
caused by the environmental pollution in the insured site
and assume the expenses incurred in the process of pol-
lution cleanup and elimination; this system can not only
help to reduce the environmental disasters and accidents
but also alleviate the government’s environmental pro-
tection burden and guarantee the rights and interests of
the environmental pollution victims and their families.
During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, we shall
further establish and improve the laws and regulations
system of environmental pollution responsibility insur-
ance and specify the compulsory direction and transi-
tional measures for the establishment of this insurance
system. Additionally, the Ministry of Environmental
Protection shall work together with the China Insurance
Regulatory Commission and insurance companies to
develop the reasonable and practical environmental in-
surance products for the major pollution industries, and
establish a three-party interaction mechanism among the
government department, insurance company and bank;
improve the establishment of some environment insur-
ance product service agencies and the environmental
responsibility arbitration agencies; make more efforts to
explore the implementation of the compulsory liability
insurance in the industries with serious pollution and
high environmental risk, make the environmental protect-
tion department to formulate the catalogue of such Indus-
tries (and their products) and relate the environmental
pollution responsibility insurance with the credit qualify-
cation of the enterprises in this catalogue. At the same
time, the government shall also provide the necessary
policy support for the development of environment pol-
lution responsibility insurance. Set up the compensation
funds for environmental pollution damage to pay for the
part beyond the insurance in case of major environment
pollution accident and pay the emergency disposal ex-
pense for any other party. On this basis, during the “12th
Five-Year Plan” period, we shall extensively carry out
the pilot work in the high accident area and the special
region with high environmental risk as much as possible,
such as selecting the enterprises in the industry dealing
with hazardous chemicals transportation, taking hazard-
ous materials as raw materials and discharging hazardous
pollutants or other hazardous wastes in the Yangtze
River Delta and Zhujiang River Delta.

P. L. XUE ET AL.
72
6. Conclusions
The frequent sudden environmental pollution events not
only caused great loss to the social economy and affected
the harmony and stability of society but also vanished the
environment governance achievement of many years,
with the damage caused to the ecological environment hard
to be restored within short time. From the “12th Five-
Year Plan” to 2020 is the mid-to-late period of industri-
alization, which will see the fast development and refor-
mation of China’s economy and society, and the stage
characteristics determine the importance of environmental
risk factors. The environmental risk factors, even reduced
in amount and improved in quality, will also exert nega-
tive influence to the ecosystem and human health, and
there are still some factors of environment safety and
environment risk are beyond the control over amount and
quality. the National 12th Five-Year Plan for Environ-
mental Protection , for the first time, lists the environ-
mental risk prevention as an important task in the “12th
Five-Year Plan” period which is parallel to the total emis-
sion reduction and quality control, and make decisions to
strengthen the environmental risk prevention and control
over the key fields through implementing the whole-
process management of environmental risk, strengthen-
ing the nuclear and radiation safety management, re-
straining the high-frequency state of heavy metal pollu-
tion events, promoting the safe treatment and disposal of
solid wastes and improving the chemical-induced envi-
ronmental risk prevention and control system.
This paper analyzed the classification and gradation of
environmental risk source, environmental risk regionali-
zation, environmental pollution emergency response at
three levels (enterprise, park and region) and environmental
risk & environmental insurance, and presented the em-
phases of the whole-process management of environ-
mental risk of China during the “12th Five-Year Plan”
period, and provided theimportant basis for the preven-
tion of China’s environmental pollution accident and the
industrial distribution in the same period.
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