Birds rest in a wetland along the Yangtze River in Suzhou.
The General Office of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Government recently issued an action plan to win the critical battle in the protection and ecological rehabilitation in the Yangtze River in the province.
It has clarified the overall requirements, key tasks, and safeguard measures for protecting the river’s ecology, rolled out stringent initiatives to enlarge the space protection, control pollution, and reduce emissions amid efforts to gradually restore ecological functions of the river and keep improving environmental quality.
The plan has identified nine tasks, such as strengthening ecological space environment control to safeguard the ecological red line, promoting integrated supervision of water and land, improving industrial pollution control to curb ecological and environmental risks, strengthening prevention and control of agricultural and rural pollution to continuously improve countryside living environment, and filling gap in environmental infrastructure to ensure the safety of drinking water sources.
According to the plan, Jiangsu will optimize the industrial structure layout, banning the building or expansion of chemical parks and projects within 1 km of the Yangtze River as well as tributaries and eliminating illegal industrial parks according to law. Before the end of 2020, all farming activities in the designated no-farming areas will be terminated and illegally fence aquaculture in key lakes and reservoirs will also be fully regulated.
