Research On Climate Change Legislation Of China

Climate change has become a major international issue of common concern, and brings enormous challenge to the social and economic development of various countries. In order to combating climate change, governments strengthen their international cooperation and domestic action in many fields such as science, technology, economy and law, etc. Law as social norms formulated by the Sate has the functions of notice, guidance, assessment, forecasting, education and enforcement. It is important to use the law to guide and control actions for tackling challenge posed by climate change.Comprehensive and in-depth knowledge about climate change is the prerequisite of legal guidance and control to actions addressing climate change and climate change legislation. Excessive anthropogenic greenhouse gases emission to atmosphere is the main reason of current climate change, and mitigation and adaptation are the two basic paths to fight climate change. Despite their own characteristics, mitigation and adaptation can be unified under the framework of sustainable development. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change can not be conducted without using various policy tools. The complexity of mitigation and adaptation require integrated use of command and controls policy tools, economic incentive policy tools, voluntary participation policy tools and government accountability-based policy tools. It is better to regulate and guide mitigation and adaptation actions by choosing climate change policy tools reasonably and then legalizing them.The need to address climate change and the traditional branches of law can not effectively address climate change are the general reasons for the emergence of climate change law. Climate change law is not to completely replace existing law related to climate change, but rather the development and upgrade on the basis of existing law. Climate change law is a bunch of rules wihch regulates the social relations arising from the process of mitigating and adapting climate change. Scientific, technologic, comprehensive and public natures are the basic characters, and mitigation and adaptation are the basic paradigms of climate change law. Gverments, enterprises and the public are the main subjects, climate change rights are the key contents, and ecosystem, human health, material weath and actions combating climate chang are the objects of climate change law. Mitigation law, adaptation law and comprehensive climate change law built up the framework of climate change law.Through cooperation by international community, the international legal framework for combating climate change has been established, and governments expressed their climate change policies and positions from their own interests. International obligations and key countries’positions on addressing climate change bring external pressure for our country to strengthen climate change legislation. The growing energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions with the economic and social development make our country face huge pressure on energy saving and emission reduction. A large population, less developed economy, poor weather conditions and fragile ecological environment are the fundamental realities of our country, which made China is vulnerable to climate change and face urgent task of adapting to climate change. Imperfection of the existing laws and regulations related to climate change make our country are more necessary and urgent to enhance climate change legislation.Practical analysis and theory establishment provides practical and theoretical basis for climate change legislation in our country, while studing the climate change legislation in major countries can provide useful reference for China’s climate change legislation. According to the legislation practices of foreign countries, the legislation types of them can be divided into dispersive type which represented by EU and German, merged type which represented by USA and Korea, and synthesized type which represented by Japan and UK. After comparative study of climate change legislation in aforementioned countries, we find out that there are different legislation types at present, but more and more counties choose the synthesized type; preventative and controlling systems and supporting and safeguarding systems are the legal systems for addressing climate change which adopted by all the aforementioned countries.It is necessary to clarify the values, objectives and principles of China’s climate change law before legislation. Because legal value, legal objective and legal principle are not only the core contents of legal research, but also the premise for legislation, which influence the value orientation, objective selection and principle identification of China’s climate change legislation. Through analysis and exploration, we think that order, justice and efficiency constitutes the value system of China’s climate change law; maintaining ecosystem stability, protecting personal and property safety and promoting social development (environmental protection, economic development and social advance are coordinated) makes up the purpose system of China’s climate change law; and attaching equal importance to mitigation and adaptation, participating by all legal subjects and developing harmoniously should be the basic principles of China’s climate change law.According to the scientific understanding of climate change, basic theory of climate change law, fundamental realities of our country and reference to overseas experience on climate change legislation, our country should choose the legislative model of formulating special and synthesized "Climate Change Law"; build up "One Body, Two Wings and Four Directions" climate change law system; timely modify and improve existing laws and regulations related to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, when formulating special and synthesized "Climate Change Law".