At present in China, land, minerals, water, forests, mountains, grasslands, wasteland, beaches and other natural resources are managed by different administrative agencies, such as with Ministry of Land and Resources, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Construction, Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Agriculture, State Forestry Bureau etc. Each organization are only responsible for its own jurisdiction scope. These are the various planning disputes among these organization, causing chaos, regulatory supervision difficult on the natural resources, the exploitation utilization and protection of natural resources did not form a unified whole system.
For example, at present there are dozens of plans for the control of land and space use which including 1) the Ministry of land and resources has the responsibility of organizing and compiling the planning of land use planning, land and resources planning, mineral resources planning, and geological exploration planning. 2) The national development and Reform Commission has the responsibility of organizing the planning of the main functional area; 3)
The Ministry of housing and urban and rural construction has the responsibility of organizing the planning of urban and rural areas; 4) The Ministry of water resources has the responsibility of organizing water resources planning; 5) the Ministry of agriculture has the responsibility of organizing grassland planning; 6) The State Forestry Administration has organized responsibilities for resource planning such as forests and wetlands; 7) the State Oceanic Administration has organized the responsibilities of marine planning etc. Each planning has different legal basis, different standards which cause different disputes and cause the plan is discounted in the implementation and even can’t be carried out at all.
At present the management of natural resources in China is just resource management, rather than asset management and there is no grant to the various administrative agencies of the power for fulfilling the responsibility of all the owners of all kinds of natural resources assets which resulted in the owner’s equity is difficult to be truly reflected and easily lead to the loss of state-owned natural resources assets.
The main purpose of setting up the new ministry of natural resources is to “To exercise unified national all natural resources assets owner duties, to unified exercise all land space use control and ecological protection and repair responsibilities, to take efforts to solve natural resource owners are not in place, space planning and overlapping problem etc. and to realize the overall protection system repair, comprehensive management on land, minerals, water, forests, mountains, grasslands, wasteland, beaches and other natural resources.
First, how to identify and understand all natural resources in China It will take effort to strengthen the general survey of all the natural resources around in China fully carry out surveying and geological exploration and do well of the work for unified registration of natural resources real estate. It needs to speed up the speed and efficiency of unified investigation and registration of natural resources and lay a solid data foundation for better unified management of natural resources and national macro regulation.
Second, how to construct the legal system of various natural resources and find legally solution or measures on the problem on manage various natural resources.
Third, when the new ministry conducts the duties as natural resources assets owner, how to deal with the relationship between the government and the market and how to deal with the relationship between the owner of natural resource assets and the supervisor of natural resources. As in practice it will need to strengthen supervision as well as play a decisive role in the allocation of natural resources; it will need to establish communication, consultation and supervision mechanisms to achieve information sharing between different agencies.
Finally, efforts must be made to manage the relationship between the supervision of natural resources and the environmental governance. In the new institutional reform plan, there will be new Ministry of Ecology and environment which will be mainly exercise ecological and pollution discharge supervision and strengthen environmental pollution control responsibilities. So, it is also a challenge for the Ministry of natural resources on how to coordinate, how to find the proper boundary line of their responsibilities.