Research On China’s Eco-Label Certification System

Eco-label is a kind of "certification mark" with the ability to supervise.It forms a bottom-up "green consensus" through voluntary certification,market incentives,condensed consensus,and restraint measures.The eco-label certification system guided by the third-generation environmental regulation theory and information economics theory binds the power of producers and consumers together and enables the development of green industries to embark on a healthy incentive cycle model.Through consumers’ green consumption choices as incentives,product manufacturers are guided and forced to upgrade production technology and improve production processes.The current eco-label certification can be divided into a government-led "power + technology" model and a third-party certification agency-led "right + technology" model.China’s eco-label certification system adopts the former,which aims to gain public trust and popularization with the help of government credibility and environmental accountability mechanisms.China launched the first ecolabel "China Eco-label " in the 1990 s.After more than 20 years of development,China’s eco-label certification system has achieved impressive results.However,compared with developed countries,the implementation and development of China’s ecolabel certification system is still stagnant.Various eco-label certification standards are not unified,and the phenomenon of “free-riding” eco-labels are major obstacles to the development of China’s eco-label certification system.There are three main reasons for this phenomenon: lack of cooperation between departments to which different labels belong,shortage of administrative supervision resources for ecolabel products,and the absence of trademark law in the protection of eco-labels.Combining the actual national conditions of China and the implementation experience of the eco-label certification system in the United States and Germany,the following countermeasures are put forward: firstly,strengthen the cooperation between the departments of eco-labels,issue the "Formal Eco-label Certification Standards" to unify the eco-labels’ certification standards;secondly,introduce the industry selfdiscipline supervision model to make up for the limited administrative law enforcement resources;finally,for the determination of trademark infringement of eco-labels,the elements of "trademark use" infringement are abandoned,to decrease the threshold for the determination of trademark infringement of eco-labels,so as to improve the judicial protection of eco-labels and promote the development and improvement of the certification system of eco-labels.