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BEIJING -- China's premier says local officials will be held accountable for pollution problems after the country failed to meet official environmental goals, state media reported.
Wen Jiabao said officials will have to report on energy consumption and emissions every six months in a new initiative that aims to cut energy consumption by 20 percent, reduce major pollutants by 10 percent and increase forest coverage from 18.2 percent to 20 percent by 2010, the China Daily newspaper said.
Wen's comments reflect a new push by the government to balance the headlong pursuit of economic growth with environmental and social goals. It's an ambitious shift after decades of breakneck development, and the government has yet to give its environmental watchdog real power to punish violations.
Wen said environmental protection will be used in assessing officials' job performance after China failed to meet eight of 20 targets set five years ago for such things as cutting air pollution and improving water quality, the paper said.
The failure was due to "lack of awareness, insufficient planning, illogical industrial structure and a weak legal framework," Wen was quoted as saying at a two-day environment conference in Beijing.
A news report quoted the chief environmental regulator as saying China has suffered 76 environmental accidents, or one every two days, since a toxic river spill in November in China's northeast forced a major city to shut down its drinking water system.
Most incidents involved toxic pollutants released into rivers or the air, said Zhou Shengxian, head of the State Environmental Protection Administration, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.
"If environmental protection efforts continue to lag behind economic growth, pollution will become even more rampant," Zhou was quoted as saying after attending the Beijing conference.
The meeting coincided with some of the worst air pollution to hit Beijing in years. Officials seeded clouds in an effort to clear the air after a dust storm described as the worst in five years covered the city in yellow grit.
"We cannot just sit for discussions behind the closed door while the sandy weather has raged outside for more than 10 days," the People's Daily newspaper quoted Wen as saying. "Besides climatic factors, it mirrors the critical environmental situation we are facing."
China's government has been replanting "green belts" of trees throughout the north in an effort to trap the dust after decades when the storms worsened amid heavy tree-cutting.
Between 2000-2005, China failed to meet goals in cutting emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, improving wastewater treatment and limiting industrial solid waste discharges, the China Daily said.
The government says some 340 million people in rural China lack access to water considered clean enough to drink.
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