Regarding the legal safeguards for environmental human rights, China has effectively safeguarded the public's environmental rights by taking a series of actions including tackling climate change, controlling ecological deterioration and preventing and controlling environmental pollution. After 12 years of continuous endeavors, national human rights action plans have yielded remarkable results in environmental rights protection. This mainly includes improving the law-based governance on the ecological environment, ensuing the public's environmental rights and interests, solving livelihood-related environmental issues, enhancing the ecological environment quality, and effectively safeguarding public health. All of these have notably increased the public's sense of gain, happiness and security in the ecological environment, which constitutes a highlight in China's human rights protection.
The new five-year Human Rights Action Plan (2021-2025) includes "environmental rights" as a separate chapter, right after the chapters of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights. At the same time, the regulations on environmental rights in the new action plan have also been expanded and enriched. We have reviewed previous action plans and found that the "one aspect, seven tasks" of environmental rights set out in the first edition in 2009 have been expanded to "six aspects, 18 tasks" in the latest fourth edition. You are welcome to glance over them. The contents of the new action plan are richer with more systematic and comprehensive deployments, and they play a pioneering and guiding role, which I think is of great practical significance.
The new Human Rights Action Plan has not only modified its structure and chapters, but also updated its contents. The action plan demonstrates that the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core holds that ecological conservation is of fundamental importance to the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, adheres to the people-centered development philosophy, vigorously promotes innovation in theory, practice and system involving ecological progress, and forms Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization. This thought serves as the fundamental basis for us to safeguard the public's environmental rights and interests.
Now we are all studying Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, especially those of us in environmental protection departments. I have learned that ecological protection work in the new era is closely related to environmental rights and interests, which, in my opinion, is mainly reflected in the following four aspects.
