authoritative interpretation| Ma Jun: Improve the quality of corporate information disclosure, standardize the credit evaluation standards

Ma Jun, director of the Center for Public Environmental Research (IPE) and founder of Azure Map. In 2006, the Public Environmental Research Center was established, the Azure Map APP was launched in 2014, and the "double carbon" map was developed in 2020 to promote public participation and empower green supply chains and green finance. Since 2019, he has served as a specially invited observer for the ecological environment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and Promoting Chinese-Style Modernization"(hereinafter referred to as the "Decision") adopted by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to deepen the reform of the ecological civilization system, emphasizing "deepening the reform of the environmental information disclosure system in accordance with the law, and building an environment. Credit supervision system."

At present, my country is constantly improving the requirements for environmental information disclosure. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment has issued a special "Measures for the Management of Legal Disclosure of Enterprise Environmental Information"(hereinafter referred to as the "Measures"). The China Securities Regulatory Commission and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council have carried out relevant practices for the mandatory, standardized and comparable development of environmental information disclosure by listed companies and central state-owned enterprises. The rapid development of the environmental credit system has formed a relatively stable working framework and policy system, effectively protecting the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises, maintaining fair market competition, and optimizing the business environment.

So, how to further deepen the reform of the legal disclosure system of environmental information and build an environmental credit supervision system? The reporter recently interviewed Ma Jun, director of the Social Organization Public Environmental Research Center.

my country has made historic progress in environmental information disclosure

China Environment News: The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to "publish environmental information in a timely manner, improve the reporting system, and strengthen social supervision". The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to "deepen the reform of the environmental information disclosure system in accordance with the law, and build an environmental credit supervision system", the formulation has undergone major changes. What does this explain?

Ma Jun:Eleven years have passed since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. At that time, the environmental pollution situation was severe, environmental law enforcement was relatively weak, and environmental information disclosure was still in its preliminary stage. In this context, it is proposed to "promptly publish environmental information" to ensure that the public is informed about the environment; the requirement to "improve the reporting system" and "strengthen social supervision" is aimed at assisting environmental law enforcement through social participation, focusing on solving pollution problems that affected the public at that time.

The relevant formulation of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has changed, reflecting the historic progress my country has made in environmental information disclosure over the past decade. Taking the ecological and environmental department as an example, it not only releases environmental quality information such as air and water quality in a timely manner, but also discloses corporate environmental supervision records on a large scale. Since its implementation in March 2022, the "Measures for the Management of Legal Disclosure of Enterprise Environmental Information" formulated by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment have prompted more than 80,000 key enterprises to disclose information in accordance with the law, which has played a positive role in standardizing corporate environmental information disclosure behavior, enhancing corporate awareness of environmental responsibility, and strengthening Environmental protection and legal supervision have played a positive role in promoting corporate green transformation and low-carbon development.

In the past five years, my country's environmental credit supervision system has also made great progress in some regions. Major industrial provinces such as Shandong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu have carried out environmental credit ratings on hundreds of thousands of companies, allowing more than one million companies across the country to be included in environmental credit evaluations. Some of them have been dynamically updated and have been effectively applied by financial institutions.

Companies included in the disclosure list in some regions are not yet complete

China Environment News: What pain points and difficulties are we currently facing in deepening the reform of the legal disclosure system of environmental information?

Ma Jun:Although positive progress has been made in the construction of the legal disclosure system for environmental information and the environmental credit supervision system, they also face difficulties and challenges.

It has not been long since the legal disclosure platforms for corporate environmental information in various provinces have been established, and some platforms are relatively complete, but the construction of some disclosure platforms still needs to be strengthened. In addition, the companies included in the disclosure list in some regions are not complete.

In accordance with the criteria for inclusion in the "Measures" in the list, our eight social organizations have used big data comparison to identify enterprises that meet the requirements but have not yet been included in the ICPI list, and have made suggestions to the local ecological environment department for three consecutive years, hoping to help improve corporate environmental information. Disclosure of the list in accordance with the law. What is exciting is that a considerable number of ecological and environment departments of municipalities directly under the Central Government and prefecture-level cities have adopted or partially adopted our suggestions and opinions.

At present, my country's ecological civilization construction has entered a critical period of focusing on carbon reduction, promoting synergy and efficiency gains in pollution reduction and carbon reduction, promoting comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, and achieving the improvement of ecological environment quality from quantitative change to qualitative change. However, the number of key enterprises included in the mandatory disclosure list of carbon information is still relatively limited, and guidelines for more enterprises to standardize voluntary disclosures have yet to be formulated, which is difficult to meet the need to drive enterprises to save energy and reduce carbon emissions through market-oriented methods.

In terms of environmental credit construction, although there are relatively leading provinces and cities, more regions have not yet been covered. Some regions can only publicly obtain the credit ratings of dozens of companies. Some regions are only updated once a year, which is not enough to support the operation of market-oriented mechanisms.

Make full use of environmental information disclosure and credit evaluation

China Environment News: How to better combine environmental information disclosure with environmental credit supervision and promote the construction of ecological and environmental governance responsibility systems, supervision systems, market systems, and laws, regulations and policy systems?

Ma Jun:Over the past ten years, the legal disclosure of environmental information and the environmental credit rating system have played a positive role in the construction of the environmental governance system, effectively promoting all sectors to participate in pollution control, and forcing enterprises to implement the main responsibility of pollution control through "one violation and restrictions everywhere"., helping to achieve large-scale emission reductions and rapid improvement of air quality and water quality.

The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China emphasized the role of market mechanisms. To mobilize the power of green finance, green supply chains and carbon markets, information disclosure must be the basis. To this end, I suggest starting from the following three aspects to implement the requirements of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee.

The first is to further standardize the legal disclosure system of corporate environmental information, improve the quality of corporate disclosure, and gradually include greenhouse gas emissions, product carbon footprints, biodiversity impacts, new pollutants and waste recycling into the scope of disclosure.

Second, while promoting the successful experience of building environmental credit supervision systems in advanced provinces and cities, we will further standardize environmental credit evaluation standards, establish a dynamic update mechanism, and use digital technology to improve the accuracy and scientificity of credit evaluation and supervision.

The third is to further expand the application of corporate disclosure and credit rating, guide leading enterprises to carry out green and low-carbon supply chain management based on data, and promote large banks and financial institutions to carry out in-depth green credit, green securities, green bonds and green insurance, and then encourage them through market forces. Enterprises actively disclose environmental information. Driven by the severe global climate situation, Chinese and foreign companies are accelerating climate action. Faced with huge challenges, we must implement the requirements of the Decision, continuously deepen reforms, make full use of information disclosure and credit evaluation, stimulate the endogenous motivation of enterprises to save energy and reduce emissions, and promote the realization of the "double carbon" goal.