Abstract: Decades of rapid industrialization have caused a dramatic decline in environmental quality in the People’s Republic of China, which has prompted Chinese officials to call for redirecting China’s modernization efforts toward the construction of an ‘ecological civilization’ (shengtaiwenming 生态文明). The many environmental laws that China has enacted since 1979, which borrow heavily from Western precedents, are a vital part of this effort. Unfortunately, these laws have been plagued by both compliance and enforcement problems. Cultural factors are largely to blame. The many Western-style features of China’s environmental laws depend for their effectiveness on the cultural dimensions of a strong rule of law, which are in tension with essential elements of China’s ancient legal tradition. China’s environmental laws would be more effective allies in its quest to build an ecological civilization if they were aligned more closely with that tradition in at least four ways.

Abstract: After being proposed in 2015, environmental vertical management (VM) reform was hailed as being able to bridge the environmental law enforcement gap, because it helps in insulating environmental protection agencies from intervention by local governments, thus functioning to end local protectionism brought about by the traditional ‘dual leadership’ model. This article identifies how the ongoing reform process changes the institutional structure of environmental management, explains the reasons for initiating such a reform and analyses whether VM can be as effectiveas intended. It is concluded that promotion of an environmental VM reform reflects the vicissitudes of central government-local government relations inthe environmental era. As a method to strengthen central oversight on local environmental performance, VM is far from the sole or the most cost-effective method to realize this goal. The environmental VM reform plan combines both centralization and decentralization approaches. The design of ‘soft’ (extension of reform below provincial level) and fragmented (selectedmonitoring and inspection) centralization may decrease the anticipated effectiveness of VM reform by moving local malfeasance from municipal and county levels to the provincial level (‘provincial protectionism’) and thus continuing to harm the integrity of environmental management. As a partial solution, VM reform needs to be supplemented with incentive and accountability mechanisms, and by more effective and professional enforcement activities at local levels.

Abstract: The article discusses the development of the Paris Agreement’s provision on a compliance mechanism contained in Article 15 of the agreement. There is a risk that a compliance mechanism set up as a separate body within the new regime will be duplicative and dysfunctional. Keeping state parties to their Paris Agreement obligations can be achieved, instead, through the elaboration of pre-existing and already well-developed reporting-and-review processes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the past, these have generated sufficient pressure on states to maintain compliance with their UNFCCC obligations, and are likely to have the same effect for the new treaty. The fact that the Paris Agreement does not impose any onerous new obligations on states is a reason tocontinue to rely on existing processes. I show that the separate compliance body envisaged by the Paris Agreement has no obvious way to improve on the diffuse ‘compliance mechanism’ currently operating under the UNFCCC. The most efficient approach to ‘Paris Agreement compliance’, therefore, would be to delay implementation of the Article 15 mechanism and allow current practices, suitably modified, to continue for as long as their performance is satisfactory.

Author: Tracy Humby