Abstract
Today, China demonstrates considerable willingness and ability to take on leadership in the fight against climate change. The concept of “ecological civilization” included in the national legislation of the PRC has a chance to go beyond the national framework and become a set of new guidelines and approaches in the field of environmental protection. The research attempts to provide a qualitative assessment of the prospects for the development of the concept of “ecological civilization” and the role of the Aarhus Convention as a tool for the formation of this concept in the post-epidemic world. The concept of “ecological civilization” is considered from the perspective of the policy and law of the PRC, as well as from the standpoint of moving beyond the national framework, including in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, the study examines the role of the mechanisms of the Aarhus Convention as a progressive tool for the development of the ecological civilization concept against the background of the current legislative regulation in the PRC. The study suggests that in the context of the acceptance of the ecological civilization concept, China is gradually adopting the mechanisms of the Aarhus Convention, which tend to some liberalization in terms of public access to information on the environment and justice. Practically, the study is of interest to legislative initiative subjects and specialists involved in the development of democratic institutions and justice.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Notes
The National Sword Program is a policy initiative launched in 2017 by the Chinese government to monitor and more strictly review the import of recyclable waste (See: Allan (2018). China puts recycled to the sword https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.880158420893395).
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Funding
This study was funded by the Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education, Research on the Path of Chinese National Ecological Quality Education in the New Development Stage (21YJC710056); The Project of the Key Research Base of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Hainan Province: Research on the Ecological Governance System and Mechanism of Hainan Free Trade Port under the Dual Carbon Goal (No. HNSK (JD) 22-26).
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Dong, Q. Aarhus Convention in the Formation of the Ecological Civilization Concept. J Knowl Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-01997-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-024-01997-8