21
SepA flood in the national vegetable base Shouguang City, Shandong Province, has caused widespread public concern. This is not only because the price of vegetables in many countries in the country has risen, but also the long-term lack of water in the city has been exposed. A city famous for its anti-season vegetables in the greenhouse, and the use of water resources due to over-exploitation, caused the river to dry up. Not only that, but the pillar industries such as papermaking, which is vigorously developed in the city, are also polluting the water resources that are already harded up.
Shouguang is obviously not an isolated case. Many cities in China are experiencing development shackles like Shouguang, but Shouguang has received much attention because of natural disasters. In the past, the high-pollution, high-energy-consumption, high-input industrial development model has already shown signs of fatigue, and it has increasingly intensified demands for people to pay the price. At the same time, how to follow a green and sustainable development path has become a challenge that many cities have to face and ponder.
First, when certain industries in the city develop to a certain stage, they need to consider how to transform and upgrade. Especially for industries such as vegetable cultivation that are heavily dependent on natural resources, it is even more necessary to take advantage of the trend. In the past, Shouguang City has been hailed at home and abroad for its vegetable cultivation, but the growing industry has become an unbearable burden in the city. Many cities in northern China are generally short of water and face challenges similar to those in Shouguang City. They need to infer other things from the case of Shouguang City. The dominant industries in the past are increasingly eroding the foundation of sustainable development, the cultivation and growth of new industries requires long-term investment and persistence.
Under this circumstance, the local government needs to have the determination to cure the wounds to scrape bones in order to plan and promote the industrial transformation ahead of schedule. At the beginning of this year, people applauded Liu Jiayi, the secretary of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee, who honestly pointed out the shortcomings of development model and proposed to transform old to new kinetic energy. We hope that more local politicians can make capacity and supply-side reforms, and achieve industrial transformation and upgrading, following a sustainable development path.
Secondly, the Shouguang floods also reflect the fragility of agricultural development, indicating the need to further increase government support and protection of agriculture. The Shouguang floods have caused many vegetable prices to rise, and how to ensure the safety of the “vegetable basket” has become a concern. Agriculture is seriously disturbed by uncertain factors such as the weather. In recent years, the rising price of garlic, bean, and ginger and other phenomena have appeared frequently, which has a lot to do with the cyclical fluctuations of agricultural planting and circulation. If we want to improve the national agricultural security, we must not let this problem of damaging farmers be repeated again and again.
Some commentators pointed out that the Shouguang floods caused local growers to “work hard for decades and return to liberation overnight”. Indeed, in the context of the globalization of agricultural trade, agriculture and rural development are facing various uncertainties, and the development limitations of small-scale agriculture are becoming increasingly obvious. In order to avoid the recurrence of the tragedy such as the Shouguang flood, it is necessary to increase the guidance and support of the government departments for agricultural development and strengthen the construction and maintenance of farmland water conservancy infrastructure.
To maintain the bottom line of farmland water infrastructure, the foundation for long-term development should not be sacrificed for immediate benefit. At the same time, the government should also consider safeguards such as compulsory insurance and large-scale operations to avoid irreparable damage to farmers in the event of natural disasters.
The report of the 19th National Congress and this year's government work report all proposed that we should vigorously implement the rural revitalization strategy, especially to promote the structural reform of the agricultural supply side, "cultivate new business entities, improve the level of agricultural science and technology, promote the comprehensive development of agricultural mechanization, and strengthen socialized services for small farmers. Only in this way can we truly realize the modernization and deep transformation of agricultural production and provide new kinetic energy for the development of rural areas.
Finally, the Shouguang emergency response to the flood is also criticized, indicating that governments at all levels need to strengthen the prevention and preparation of emergency management. Because of the large amount of water used for vegetable cultivation, the local rivers are intercepted and the groundwater is over-exploited. This has caused Shouguang City to be in a state of water shortage for a long time, and its anticipation of floods is not enough, and it is also slack in the prevention of floods. Because of inadequate preparation and lack of emergency capability, natural disaster becomes a man-made disaster, I have to say that emergency management capabilities need to be improved.
In terms of emergency management, the July 21 torrential rainstorm in Beijing and the 7.19 Xingtai torrential rain in 2016 all experienced early warning in time but delayed evacuation, resulting in serious loss of life and property. The water conservancy facilities have been in disrepair for a long time, and people's first-aid training is inadequate, which has caused the local emergency management of flood disasters to fall short. Although China's governments at all levels have been doing a good job in crisis response and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, they need to be further strengthened in terms of emergency plans and preventive preparation.
The establishment of the Emergency Management Department at the beginning of this year provided a basic framework for the horizontal inter-departmental coordination, and also significantly improved cross-departmental coordination in the field of emergency management. We look forward to gradually strengthening prevention and preparedness capabilities under the new emergency management organization system to truly complement the shortcomings of emergency management.
(The author is the research fellow of NADS and associate professor of the School of Public Administration of RUC)
Opinions