Corporate environmental compliance: the choice of the times, the blue ocean of business

Author | Li Junqiang, Director of Zhiheng Longgang Management Committee

content summary

China has entered a new era, and more and more attention has been paid to the construction of ecological civilization. In this context, corporate environmental compliance, a new demand and new business that meets the requirements of the times, will inevitably be born. Corporate environmental compliance is a type of professional service that aims to ensure that the production and operation activities of enterprises meet the requirements of environmental protection, protect enterprises from environmental risks from the source, and enhance their core competitiveness.

Environmental protection lawyers should adapt to the needs of the times, continuously explore corporate environmental compliance legal services, and be good at summarizing experience, optimizing and improving and improving the overall service level, so that corporate environmental compliance legal services can truly help high-quality development. This paper mainly introduces the thinking and practice of corporate environmental compliance, telling readers: the core of corporate environmental compliance is effectiveness, the key is to grasp the most dynamic factor of "people", through reasonable design, the responsibility of environmental compliance management will be reasonably decomposed to each person and each link, and through reasonable system design to ensure that it can be done in place.

Understanding corporate environmental compliance

Enterprise environmental compliance, refers to the compliance management activities on environmental protection special project affairs in the enterprise, is to ensure that the production and operation activities of enterprises meet the requirements of environmental protection for the purpose, to mobilize the enthusiasm of all participants, initiative as the focus, to comprehensively identify environmental factors as the basis, to refine, decompose and implement responsibilities as the key, around the core of management effectiveness, from the source to ensure that enterprises away from risk, enhance the core competitiveness of compliance management activities.

From the above definition, it can be seen that the specific and obvious characteristics of corporate environmental compliance mainly include:

First, the main body of implementation is the enterpriseIn particular, companies that are involved in environmental protection issues or have a greater impact.

Second, the scope of management is limited to environmental protectionOf course, the term "environmental protection" here refers to the concept of environmental protection, so it also includes resources, energy and ecology.

The third approach is compliance managementIt is the introduction of globally recognized and effective management methods into enterprise environmental protection management.

Fourth, the core objective is effectivenessThe guarantee of effectiveness includes comprehensive and accurate factor identification, clear, reasonable and feasible breakdown of responsibilities.

Fifth, the purpose is to prevent and control risks and enhance core competitiveness。

Corporate environmental compliance is the need of the times

Corporate environmental compliance is a new service that only emerged under the historical background of China entering a new era, and it is also a choice to adapt to the requirements of ecological civilization construction and high-quality development in the new era. Specifically, it includes:

First, it is conducive to laying a solid foundation for environmental protectionEnterprises are the main and most important responsible subjects for environmental protection. The better the performance of environmental compliance responsibilities of enterprises, the firmer the foundation for environmental protection workHowever, for a long time, the implementation of environmental compliance responsibilities of enterprises has not been well implemented, and enterprises have also suffered from not finding better management methods, resulting in frequent environmental problems, unstable environmental foundation, and the environmental foundation has never been able to meet the standards and requirements of the new era.

Enterprise environmental compliance is to mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of enterprise environmental compliance, and introduce compliance management into enterprise environmental protection management to ensure that the production and operation behavior of enterprises meets the requirements of environmental protection. If all enterprises (even most enterprises) can achieve environmental compliance, the realization of the ideal goal of environmental protection will have a solid and reliable foundation.

The second is to contribute to the achievement of high-quality development goalsHigh-quality development is the primary task of the Chinese path to modernization construction. The quality of enterprise development directly affects the realization of high-quality development goals. The requirements of the ecological environment in the new era are getting higher and higher, and environmental protection has become an important factor in determining the survival and development of enterprises, and even become the core factor of some types of enterprises.

The quality of enterprise environmental protection management directly affects the quality of enterprise development. Improving the quality of enterprise environmental protection management has become an important part of enterprises to implement high-quality development requirements. Carrying out enterprise environmental protection compliance management will help to comprehensively improve the quality of enterprise environmental protection management, and can have a demonstration and driving effect on other management behaviors of enterprises, thus playing a positive and important role in the high-quality development of enterprises.

The third is to better ensure the safety of enterprises and help them develop rapidly and healthilyWith the increasingly strict requirements of ecological civilization construction in our country, more and more enterprises are punished for environmental violations, which affects the development and even survival of enterprises. Exploring effective environmental protection management methods has become an urgent need for current enterprises

Corporate environmental compliance is currently the best environmental management method, the most effective way to prevent and control environmental risks, and the most effective way to enhance the core competitiveness of corporate environmental protection. Implementing effective corporate environmental protection management can not only keep enterprises away from environmental risks, but also enhance their environmental competitiveness, so that enterprises can win greater advantages and gain stronger competitiveness under the increasingly stringent environmental pressure situation.

Comprehensive evaluation, corporate environmental compliance should be the best, most comprehensive and most effective corporate environmental management methods.

Corporate environmental compliance is a blue ocean business

Enterprise environmental compliance business not only involves a large number of subjects, but also the service demand lasts for a long time. At the same time, the subject and service demand will continue to increase with changes in the situation and requirements, and the quality requirements of services will continue to improve. The combined effect of these factors will make the business a blue ocean for environmental protection lawyers.

First of all, from the perspective of the number of entities involved, our country has a huge market entityAccording to the authoritative data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2022, there were 170 million market entities in our country. According to Qichacha data, as of June 3, 2021, there were 2.9241 million environmental protection-related enterprises in our country.

In 2020, there will be 588,700 new registrations of related enterprises. With the continuous increase in environmental protection management, the scope of enterprises involved in environmental protection will continue to expand, and the number will increase accordingly. These environmental protection-related enterprises and even all market players may have different degrees of environmental compliance management needs.

Secondly, from the perspective of the duration of corporate environmental compliance business, this will be a long-term social needOn the one hand, environmental protection is a continuous and arduous task that requires long-term efforts to solveThis determines that it will definitely last for a long timeOn the other hand, the realization of our country's "double carbon" goal will continue until 2060, and the needs of corporate environmental compliance management cannot end earlier than that time.

This also determines that the business will continue for a long time.

Third, from the perspective of service scope and content, the scope will continue to expand, and the content will continue to increaseAt present, enterprises with enterprise environmental compliance management needs are mainly enterprises with relatively high environmental pressure, focusing on enterprises in special protection areas and included in the key management directory. With the improvement of environmental supervision requirements, the expansion of the scope and the general improvement of environmental awareness, people's requirements for environmental protection will become higher and higher, which will stimulate the willingness of more enterprises to manage environmental compliance, thereby expanding the scope of services.

At the same time, in the process of continuous optimization of ecological civilization construction, more issues will be paid attention to, which will also bring more professional service needs, leading to an expansion of the scope.

Fourth, from the perspective of service quality, the quality requirements will continue to riseWith the popularization of corporate environmental compliance legal services and the deepening of people's understanding of corporate environmental compliance legal services, the demand for service quality improvement will also increase, and the requirements for comprehensiveness, systematization, coordination and especially effectiveness will increase, which will put forward higher requirements for improving service quality. It will also promote the business stratification, grading, and corresponding new needs such as training.

This demand allows the business to exist and continue in a different form.

Enterprise environmental compliance business thinking

The core of corporate environmental compliance is effectiveness, that is, compliance can really play a role in preventing and controlling risks, improving management level and enhancing competitiveness.

The key to achieving the effectiveness of corporate environmental compliance is to grasp the most dynamic factor of employees (including the relevant personnel involved), and through reasonable design, the responsibility of environmental compliance management is reasonably decomposed to each person and each link, and done in place.

This requires us to design and build a complete set of reasonable process systems, including:

The first is to accurately and comprehensively understand the foundation and lay a solid foundationIt is to really identify the relevant environmental factors and corresponding requirements involved in the enterprise, and identify all the risks accordingly, and propose the most suitable response strategiesLay a solid foundation for formulating an enterprise environmental compliance programIn order to ensure effectiveness, it is necessary to make the identification is comprehensive, accurate and true, without any omissions, especially major omissions

The second is to develop a practical corporate environmental compliance management plan and provide an action plan for specific implementationOn the basis of comprehensive risk identification, according to the risk situation and response strategies, combined with the actual situation of the enterprise, formulate an action plan that can be effectively implemented. It is necessary to have goals, tasks, standards and other action arrangements, but also to have communication, guidance and other action support, so that all people can do it according to the plan, and can do it well, so that everyone has the will and motivation to do it.

The third is to organize and implement in a standardized and orderly manner to ensure the desired resultsIt is necessary to pay attention to the publicity and training, guidance and experience exchange of the implementation of the plan, so that the employees involved can understand the plan and their responsibilities, and truly transform it into each employee's own conscious action. At the same time, it is also necessary to reasonably supervise, evaluate, assess and motivate to help employees find problems in a timely manner, optimize and improve in a timely manner, so that the specific implementation behavior is always consistent with the goal, providing a comprehensive guarantee for the realization of the effectiveness goal.

Introduction to corporate environmental compliance business practices

In 2022, we provided full professional support for the special project of environmental compliance construction of pollution-related enterprises in Dongjiang Basin of Longgang District, carried out the business practice of environmental compliance management of enterprises, achieved certain results, accumulated some experience, and had some thoughts.

In the process of service, we mainly transform the previous thinking into specific action plans, and mainly do three aspects of work: one is to solve the problem of the motivation of enterprise implementation and change the reluctance to become voluntary; the other is to reduce the difficulty of enterprise implementation, provide relevant guidelines, indicators, so that enterprises can do; the third is to confirm and strengthen the implementation results of enterprises, build a compliance review system, so that the payment can be confirmed.

With the support of government departments such as the District Judicial Bureau and the Ecological Environment Bureau, a set of systematized intellectual achievements has been formed.

Our main practices include:

(1) Grasp the key players and strengthen the role of business players。

Enterprises are the part that bears the main responsibility in the ecological and environmental protection system, and are the most important subjects to achieve the desired effect of environmental protection. Because enterprises are not only "polluters", but also "polluters", the lack of pollution control ability is also a weak link that affects the effect of environmental protection. And as rational economic people, enterprises tend to give more priority to economic interests in the process of economic development, and it is easy to reduce the cost of governance, resulting in insufficient environmental protection management capacity, prone to illegal pollution and other chaos, which makes the ecological environment increasingly serious.

Therefore, the realization of environmental protection goals in Longgang District should focus on improving the level and capacity of environmental protection management of enterprises. As long as the level of environmental compliance and capacity enhancement of enterprises, the burden of environmental supervision will be reduced accordingly, so this is also conducive to laying a solid foundation for efficient law enforcement and efficient supervision.

Therefore, Longgang District takes enterprises as the key subject, through the construction of environmental compliance management system, gradually promotes and continuously drives more enterprises to eventually participate in environmental compliance management, hoping to eventually form a situation where all enterprises attach importance to environmental compliance and do a good job in environmental compliance, so as to fundamentally consolidate the foundation of Longgang environmental protection and ensure the full completion of environmental protection goals and tasks.

In the development of enterprise environmental compliance construction in Longgang District, according to the model of first pilot and then promotion, six enterprises with different representations were selected as pilots, and according to the pilot development situation, experience was accumulated, and guidance programs adapted to the needs of different types of enterprises were continuously constructed.

At present, the environmental compliance management of the pilot enterprises is continuing to advance, and it is expected that three to six enterprises will pass the environmental compliance enterprise evaluation this year.

(2) Foster compliance awareness and enhance the willingness of enterprises to participate.

A large number of practices in economic and social development have proved that active action can produce more effective results than passive compliance with the law. Therefore, corporate environmental compliance must first cultivate a strong willingness of enterprises to carry out environmental compliance management. Only in this way can we continuously expand the scope of enterprises participating in environmental compliance management to ensure the final desired effect.

To enhance the willingness of enterprises to comply with environmental protection, one is to rely on publicity and education to improve the understanding of environmental compliance by relevant personnel of enterprises, and form a strong awareness of environmental compliance, so as to provide a strong endogenous driving force for enterprises to start environmental compliance management and continue to carry out it effectively. Second, incentives and rewards are needed to guide more enterprises to advance in the direction of meeting the requirements of environmental protection management goals.

The third is to curb the impulse of enterprises to violate the law and reverse urge enterprises to operate in accordance with the law through the constraints of legal responsibility and other punishments. The three aspects cooperate with each other and work together to mobilize and enhance the willingness of enterprises to carry out environmental compliance.

Enterprise environmental compliance publicity and education is the foundation, should be the first problem to solve. Environmental compliance awareness training not only to carry out environmental protection-related knowledge, policy and regulatory requirements and development trends of publicity and education, but also the meaning of environmental compliance, role and typical cases of comprehensive introduction, so that enterprises really appreciate the environmental compliance management of the huge role of enterprises.

Longgang District has organized a large number of environmental protection publicity and education and environmental compliance publicity and education for the environmental protection compliance work of enterprises. For different levels of personnel of enterprises to carry out different content of publicity and education work, the main leaders of enterprises are mainly trained in environmental protection awareness, and the main leaders are improved on environmental compliance awareness.

For the middle management personnel of the enterprise, not only train their awareness of environmental compliance but also cultivate their environmental compliance management capabilities. For grassroots employees, focus on cultivating their ability to implement environmental compliance responsibilities, especially the ability to identify and effectively dispose of environmental risks in their positions in a timely manner. Through training, enterprises can further deepen their understanding of environmental compliance management, enhance their willingness to manage environmental compliance, and enhance their environmental compliance initiative.

On August 16, 2022, Longgang also specially organized a large-scale and high-specification Dongjiang River Basin pollution-related enterprise environmental compliance construction promotion meeting to fully deploy and publicize the enterprise environmental compliance construction. The promotion meeting implemented offline and online methods to the public directly and achieved obvious publicity results.

(III) Establish a guidance and support system to ease the difficulty of enterprise participation.

The willingness of enterprises to comply with environmental protection has increased. After taking the initiative to carry out environmental compliance management, they are faced with the problem of how to do it and how to do it well. In order to reduce the difficulty of enterprises to carry out environmental compliance management and enhance the confidence of enterprises to do a good job in environmental compliance work, Longgang District actively plays the advantages of government leadership, guidance, comprehensive coordination, and resource integration, and organizes experts to formulate a series of guidelines and guidelines for enterprise environmental compliance management to clear obstacles and pave the way for enterprises to carry out environmental compliance management.

At present, Longgang District has formulated the "enterprise environmental compliance responsibility indicator system", "enterprise environmental compliance management guidelines", "enterprise environmental compliance management system framework proposal" and so on.

There are multiple versions of the "Enterprise Environmental Compliance Responsibility Index System" sorted out by Longgang District for enterprises with different requirements to choose and use. The system is formed by sorting out the main environmental protection laws, regulations and rules implemented in Shenzhen and currently effective. It is the main responsibility in the field of environmental protection that enterprises should abide by, and it is also the bottom line requirement.

In the index system, special attention should be paid to the main standards and other matters involved, in order to reduce the difficulty of enterprises searching for relevant legal liability regulations and save the time for enterprises to search for liability regulations. The index system can be used by enterprises to choose corresponding regulations that meet their needs according to their own circumstances.

At the same time, according to the requirements of the environmental compliance construction plan of pollution-related enterprises in the Dongjiang River Basin of Longgang, combined with the characteristics of electroplating, alchemy and jewelry processing industries, three targeted enterprise environmental compliance responsibility indicators are formed. In addition, according to the types of responsibilities that have a particularly significant impact on enterprises, a responsibility indicator system that requires special prevention and control is reverse sorted out.

For the use of different versions, corresponding instructions have also been compiled to ensure that enterprises can understand and use them, and to improve the accuracy of their use.

Longgang District formulated the "enterprise environmental compliance management guidelines" is based on the process and law of enterprise environmental compliance management, in accordance with the needs of enterprises without any environmental compliance management experience to carry out environmental compliance management, to ensure the effectiveness of compliance management core requirements for the standard.

The guide includes preface, general provisions, compliance start, figure out the base, formulate a plan, organization and implementation, continuous optimization and supplementary provisions. It consists of 7 chapters and an annex, with a total of 58 clauses and 11 schedules. The chapter of figure out the base is divided into three sections: factor identification, responsibility sorting and risk identification.

The guidelines provide clear guidance on the main work, precautions and operation methods of each link, which can meet the management needs of the whole process of environmental compliance of enterprises.

The "Suggestions on Enterprise Environmental Compliance Management System Framework" formulated by Longgang District is a reference material provided to help enterprises build an environmental compliance management system that meets their own needs. It is formulated according to the needs of the system construction in the environmental compliance management of enterprises and the requirements for effective construction. The institutional framework proposal mainly includes four parts: core objectives, main tasks, supporting support and forms of expression. Each part provides corresponding system construction objectives and core requirements according to the actual needs of the part. Many parts also provide corresponding reference texts.

With the continuous advancement of corporate environmental compliance management, Longgang District will continue to formulate and improve more guidelines, guidelines or system documents and demonstration texts that can effectively help enterprises according to the new needs revealed in corporate environmental compliance management, so as to better promote the smooth development of corporate environmental compliance management in the region.

(IV) Innovate the evaluation system to confirm management effectiveness.

To this end, Longgang District explores the construction of an enterprise environmental compliance evaluation system, so as to help Longgang enterprises to promote environmental compliance construction smoothly, and also provides scientific basis and data for continuous optimization of enterprise environmental compliance construction work.

According to the needs of enterprise environmental compliance management review, Longgang District has formulated the "Enterprise Environmental Compliance Management Review Measures" and its supporting "Longgang District Enterprise Environmental Compliance Expert Database Management Measures" and "Enterprise Environmental Compliance Evaluation Standards".

"Longgang District enterprise environmental compliance management review measures" is the basis of the review, a total of four chapters and eighteen articles, mainly on the review requirements, procedures, review results to maintain and use provisions, clear review conditions, review results of the evaluation, review results of the revocation of the quality of the content of the review.

"Longgang District enterprise environmental compliance expert database management approach" is to ensure the quality of experts system, a total of four chapters and 12 articles, mainly stipulates the establishment of expert database, expert database management and other content, is the supporting provisions of the review method, but also to ensure the orderly implementation of the review method system.

The "enterprise environmental compliance evaluation standard" is the evaluation standard of enterprise environmental compliance management effect, mainly around the law of enterprise environmental compliance management, in accordance with the pursuit of management effect, ensure the effectiveness of the requirements of the formulation, by the scope, terms and definitions, general principles, evaluation methods, review results, evaluation content and standards and preface, introduction and appendices composed of six parts, the evaluation method, evaluation standards, evaluation type and quality control to make clear provisions.

The highlights of the evaluation criteria are mainly three: First, sub-item control to improve effectiveness, enhance stability, and play a guiding role. Set up control items, deduction items, and bonus items to reflect strict control, general control, and encouragement of development, respectively. Control items are the bottom line, and encouragement items are guidance, which is to help form the needs of sustainable self-growth of environmental compliance in enterprises.

The second is classified review, interrelated, taking into account efficiency and quality. Divide the evaluation types into program evaluation and effect evaluation, and make it clear that if the program evaluation fails to pass the effect evaluation within one year after the program evaluation is passed, the program evaluation results will be cancelled and publicized, reflecting the principle of pursuing quality. The third is to treat it separately, set evaluation standards flexibly, and improve operability.

In accordance with the actual situation of the enterprise, we should emphasize the actual effect of management, avoid excessive pursuit of form, and enhance operability.

(5) Create a support system to comprehensively stimulate participation.

Enterprise environmental compliance management also needs external incentives and support, so as to further stimulate the continuous and surging participation of enterprises, and also confirm and reward the evaluation results, so that more enterprises can see the benefits of enterprise environmental compliance and drive more enterprises to participate. Longgang's support and incentive system mainly includes two parts: comprehensive support policies and criminal incentives.

The "Longgang District Enterprise Environmental Compliance Comprehensive Support Policy" is formulated from the perspective of being able to mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises to carry out environmental compliance construction, specifically from the aspects of financial assistance, tax incentives, project support, rational supervision, honorary awards, credit enhancement, penalties and exemptions. All-round and comprehensive support for enterprises that have passed environmental compliance evaluation, so that environmental compliance enterprises can operate with confidence and grow rapidly.

The "Long District Dongjiang River Basin pollution-related enterprises environmental protection criminal compliance incentives (trial) " is a provision for enterprises involved in environmental pollution criminal offences to take the way of environmental compliance incentives, criminal compliance without prosecution or mitigation of punishment, to urge enterprises to carry out environmental compliance, so as to improve the level of environmental management, environmental management to ensure that the goal of environmental management system arrangements.

The incentive method more clearly and specifically stipulates the incentive means of "compliance without prosecution", the implementation conditions, methods, processes and applications of compliance supervision and inspection, and the third-party monitoring mechanism.

Lawyer Profile

Lawyer Li Junqiang

Guangdong Zhiheng (Longgang) Law Firm, Director of Management Committee

In the field of government legal services, lawyer Li Junqiang led the Green Construction team to provide legal services to administrative agencies such as Shenzhen Ecological Environment Bureau, Shenzhen Ecological Environment Comprehensive Law Enforcement Detachment, Longgang District Government, Pingshan District Environmental Protection Bureau, and Longgang District Environmental Protection Bureau.

Led the completion of the "Shenzhen ecological environment party and government responsibility system and data platform construction research" "Shenzhen environmental protection regulations codification research" "Shenzhen construction of strict and efficient environmental law enforcement system" "Shenzhen decision-making implementation of ecological environmental protection requirements status quo and countermeasures research" and more than ten environmental research projects, formulated "lawyers for government decision-making to provide ecological environmental protection compliance assessment service operation suggestion process", entrusted to provide the whole process of environmental protection compliance construction of pollution-related enterprises in Longgang District "project professional services, formulated" enterprise environmental compliance operation guidelines "" enterprise environmental compliance evaluation standards ", etc., guide and help trial Point enterprises to comprehensively carry out corporate environmental compliance construction.

This article and its content are shared by Zhiheng lawyers. It is for communication purposes only and does not represent the legal opinions, suggestions or decision-making basis issued by the law firm or lawyers. If you need legal advice or legal professional analysis, please contact the professional lawyers of

, or leave your contact information in a private message. If you need to reprint this article, please contact the editor in the background.