Effective incentive and punishment system helps to fight air pollution

ON SUNDAY, the Beijing municipal people's congress, the local legislature, reviewed the 2017 budget and a report on the implementation of the 2016 budget. Beijing invested 16.6 billion yuan ($2.4 billion) on fighting air pollution last year, and it plans to invest 18.2 billion yuan in such efforts this year. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

Some experts worry that heavy investment in environmental protection might curb economic development. But the idea that environmental protection and economic growth are a zero-sum game has proved to be nonsense. A good example of this is Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu province.

Located between two mountains with quite heavy industries, Lanzhou suffered heavily from pollution in the last decades and was listed as one of "the top 10 cities with the heaviest air pollution nationwide". After years of efforts though, it improved its air quality to such an extent it received a prize for its achievement at the 2015 UN Paris Climate Change Conference.