Conghua district of Guangzhou, capital city of South China's Guangdong province, has been adopting green development in recent years and has made great progress in air quality and ecological preservation, providing a sound ecological foundation for the district's development. 

The environmental competitiveness and composite index of ambient air of Conghua ranked first in Guangzhou in 2020, with an AQI compliance rate over 96.1 percent, and the average annual concentrations of the six pollutants reached the national level II standard for five consecutive years. 

Focusing on the comprehensive improvement of the Liuxi River basin, measures were taken to control water discharged from industry, agriculture and social life to further protect drinking water. 

Special law enforcement actions were carried out in flood season and at heavy-polluting enterprises, untreated sewage poured into rivers and livestock farms. 

In terms of air quality improvement, the district strengthened the treatment of the three major pollution sources of industry, dust and motor vehicles, improved its response mechanism against polluted weather, rectified heavy-polluting and VOC (volatile organic compounds) enterprises, established the joint working mechanism of dust pollution control and enhanced prevention and control of mobile sources. 

On soil preservation, surveys on soil pollution in key enterprises and industrial parks were conducted. Reviews of preliminary investigation report on soil pollution of construction land were adopted. An inventory of key industry enterprises involving heavy metals was established, and treatment of construction waste disposal sites was completed. 

Efforts were stepped up in routine monitoring on environmental quality. Data was recorded and the alert system strengthened to provide scientific support for the environmental improvement of the district. 

The district environment bureau optimized assessing and approving procedures on impact documents for construction projects. Admission grants were tightened for non-environmental friendly projects. Projects that meet the requirements can be exempted from approval procedures. 

Meanwhile, an emergency response team was set up to handle environmental emergencies. 

A package of measures was taken to boost enterprise vitality, competitiveness and influence while maintaining environmental indexes, such as creating a white list of environmentally friendly enterprises, conducting off-site environmental inspections via high-tech measures to reduce the impact of resumption of work and production by enterprises, stepping up support to enterprises by one-on-one coaching and distributing anti-pollution working brochures. 

With a focus on ensuring environmental security and serving social development, Conghua is firm on becoming a service-oriented eco district committed to high-quality development.