A government official from China said on Friday that the country will influence banks to take lead in providing the financing needed to address and solve the environmental problems experienced in rural regions.
The Chinese government has been searching for new ways in order to finance efforts to remediate the contaminated land, cut the use of fertilizers and solve the huge amounts of untreated household waste which subsequently affect rural soil and water supplies.
According to the official's statement in comments published in China Environmental News, the official publication of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), with the goal of meeting the vast funding gap, China has drawn up new guidelines to encourage banks to be able to financially support for rural environmental treatment enterprises and to motivate the expansion of public-private partnerships.
China aims to treat or consume 60 per cent of livestock waste by the end of 2020, the official said. The country would also target by the end of the decade to "effectively treat" more than 90 per cent of rural household waste.
However, he added that the both central and local governments have continued to carry the whole burden of costs for the treatment of crucial waters and transmission infrastructures, and the country still struggles in implementing an effective "polluter pays" system for handling wastes.
At present, only 10 percent of China's 600,000 villages had complied with the appropriate renovations during the current round of environmental treatment, and many of those were now struggling to pay for work that had been done.
"The funding of rural environmental treatment is inadequate at every level," the official said.
He furthered that China will use favorable power prices and other preferential policies to encourage the construction of biomass and biogas power plants in rural areas.
Published in March, this China's five-year plan affirmed that the country would give priority to cleaning up contaminated soil used in agriculture. It also promised to strengthen soil pollution monitoring systems and promote new clean-up technologies.
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