A Meeting on Innovation for an Environmentally-friendly Society hosted by CCICED Secretariat and sponsored by Tsinghua University and US Environmental Defence was held on May 22. The Chinese Lead Expert, Prof. Shen Guofang chaired the meeting, and CCICED Deputy Secretary-General, Mr. Xu Qinghua attended and addressed the meeting. Also attending the meeting were renowned experts and scholars from countries like the U.S., Germany and Sweden, representatives from related departments under MOST and SEPA as well as representatives from the organizations of the Norway, Sweden, Italy, and France in China.

It was agreed by all participants of the meeting that the current situation of technological innovation in environmental protection of China was far from satisfying and there's still a long way to go ahead of us. The specific demonstration of the problems are as follows: China still faces a gap in fostering a favorable atmosphere for the buildup of an environmentally-friendly society; the application of technology still lags behind the current technological achievements on environmental protection; and there's still a gap between the innovative capacity of China with its actual demand. The problems concerning technological development and innovation in the area of environmental protection are mainly as follows: first, environmental management is severely separated from science and technology; second, we are in great lack of pollution prevention and control technology reserves, and the low rate of technological achievement transformation has hampered the building of industrilization and lead to the low level of pollution prevention and control technologies in enterprises in general; third, the technological support for environmental monitoring and law enforcement is separated, research in relevant standard and research methodology are insufficient, and rudimental strengthen in environmental monitoring, early-warning and law enforcement is weak; fourth, the technological operation staff in this field has big room for improvement in terms of expertise; fifth, the input in science and technology study is far from enough so as to establish a stable environmental science and technology input mechanism, and the basic conditions for science and technology study are obsolete. At the present stage, the contents and the implementation methods of environmental technological innovations in China should take into consideration of the following 3 aspects: first, the channeling of more capital on the R&D and pollution prevention and control in the field of environmental protection and bringing such investment in line with the development and evolvement of national strategy; second, the leapfrogging development of China in technological R&D as well as application; third, the reduction of regional and sector technological disparity through technological spreading and innovation.