By Feng Ge
China’s National People’s Congress has just approved an ambitious new Ecological and Environmental Code (生态环境法典) that unifies and updates the country’s previously fragmented ecological and environmental governance framework. This essay assesses the achievements of codification, then discusses the Code’s impact on a critical tool of enforcement, environmental public interest litigation by civil society.
The Code consolidates China’s legal framework for pollution control, ecological protection, and green and low-carbon development. It includes five parts: general provisions, pollution prevention and control, ecological protection, green and low-carbon development, and legal liability. The Code integrates—and replaces—the Environmental Protection Law, the Environmental Impact Assessment Law, and numerous existing statutes regulating air, water, and soil pollution. It also draws essential institutional provisions from ecological, natural resource, and energy-related laws, while leaving some of these narrowly targeted statutes in force, and formalizes some widely recognized regulatory practices as binding legal norms.
The primary objective of the Code is to address the fragmentation, overlaps, and inconsistencies in existing environmental legislation while filling regulatory gaps. However, integration presents substantial challenges, particularly in Part III on ecological protection. This part combines legal provisions relating to ecological conservation and natural resource management. Historically, these two areas have been governed by separate laws with different legislative objectives, guiding principles, and institutional structures. In natural resource legislation, ecological protection often appears only as a subsidiary objective rather than the primary legislative goal. The Code attempts to reconcile these conceptual differences through the selective incorporation of both types of laws, yet the overall structural coherence among the chapters remains insufficient. Moreover, several foundational concepts are not clearly defined. For example, the scope of “ecological restoration” and its relationship to the control of ecological degradation remain ambiguous.
Green and low-carbon development is the subject of another one of the Code’s five parts, reflecting the state’s strategic commitment to green transformation and the achievement of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, while also responding to the need for a coordinated legal framework integrating green development and climate governance. This part is not merely intended to mitigating environmental harm generated during development; rather, it seeks to restructure economic and social development patterns at their source, thereby providing structural solutions to environmental problems.
[The Code] seeks to restructure economic and development patterns at their source, thereby providing structural solutions to environmental problems.
Specifically, this part identifies sectoral pathways for green transition in industry, transportation, construction, and agriculture, supported by mechanisms including green standards, investment, technological innovation, public participation, and international cooperation. A key component promotes green consumption through economic incentives, government procurement policies, and restrictions on excessive packaging and single-use plastics. This part also emphasizes restructuring the energy system, and prioritizes the development of non-fossil energy sources while promoting the clean and efficient use of fossil fuels. In particular, it includes a chapter on climate change that addresses both mitigation and adaptation and commits China to active participation in global climate governance.
Finally, the Legal Liability Part consolidates environmental liability mechanisms that previously were dispersed across multiple statutes and lacked sufficient consistency. Their integration is expected to strengthen enforcement coherence and legal certainty. It is worth noting that administrative penalties remain the dominant enforcement mechanism, while judicial enforcement mechanisms play a relatively limited role.
[A]dministrative penalties remain the dominant enforcement mechanism, while judicial enforcement mechanisms play a relatively limited role.
Restrictions on NGO-Led Environmental Public Interest Litigation
Despite the Code’s stated commitment to strengthening environmental governance and public participation, several provisions significantly constrain the role of NGOs in bringing Environmental Public Interest Litigation (EPIL).
EPIL was first introduced in the 2014 amendment of the Environmental Protection Law. Since then, it has enabled environmental NGOs to hold actors responsible for environmental pollution or ecological destruction and, in some cases, to challenge environmentally harmful projects where administrative enforcement was weak or absent. Through strategic litigation and experimentation with new theories of liability, civil society organizations have demonstrated the practical value of pursuing claims in the public interest.
In the new Code, NGO-Led EPIL is addressed in Article 147 under the chapter on information disclosure and public participation. While the old Environmental Protection Law does not specify the types of lawsuits that NGOs may bring, the new Code explicitly limits NGO-led EPIL to civil public interest litigation, meaning that NGOs cannot challenge administrative actions through EPIL. Admittedly, even before the Code, courts often refused to accept administrative EPIL claims filed by NGOs, arguing that the Administrative Litigation Law does not expressly grant NGOs standing, even though the Environmental Protection Law appears to allow them. Nevertheless, leading NGOs had hoped to change judicial practice or advocate for future amendments to the Administrative Litigation Law. With the adoption of the Code and its more restrictive language, that possibility now appears remote.
Some environmental NGOs view the change as a step backward. EPIL as a mechanism for public oversight of administrative agencies is significantly weakened.
Some environmental NGOs view the change as a step backward. Public oversight of administrative agencies is essential to ensuring government accountability. By restricting NGO-led public interest litigation to civil claims, Article 147 effectively deprives NGOs of the ability to challenge administrative inaction or misconduct through litigation. As a result, EPIL as a mechanism for public oversight of administrative agencies is significantly weakened.
Even more significantly, Article 1081 of the Code further restricts EPIL by imposing stringent evidentiary requirements. At the filing stage, plaintiffs must now provide evidence demonstrating that acts such as environmental pollution or ecological destruction have violated legal provisions, that ecological damage has occurred, and the amount of ecological losses and restoration costs.
These requirements raise several concerns. First, preventive litigation is hindered. If damage has not yet occurred but poses a significant risk, NGOs may be unable to prove actual harm. Although Article 1079 establishes environmental injunctive relief reflecting the precautionary principle, Article 1081 does not accommodate preventive claims within its evidentiary structure.
Second, the evidentiary burden at the filing stage is excessive. Proving ecological damage valuation and restoration costs is technically complex, costly, and time-consuming. For example, soil contamination cases may require years of technical assessment. Moreover, the provision conflicts with the principle of a reversed burden of proof in environmental tort litigation. Requiring plaintiffs to provide evidence of ecological losses and restoration costs at the filing stage may prevent many cases from reaching the courts.
Third, the provision fails to accommodate diverse types of claims. EPIL may seek injunctive relief rather than monetary compensation. Injunctions do not require precise quantification of damages, nor do they require evidence of ecological losses or restoration costs at the filing stage.
Finally, the provision does not address emerging forms of pollution. In cases involving new or unregulated types of pollution, environmental civil public interest litigation should serve as a gap-filling mechanism grounded in tort law. Judicial mechanisms triggered by EPIL could therefore play a supplementary role, if not impeded by the new language.
The enactment of the Ecological and Environmental Code marks a critical step forward for China's environmental rule of law. Given that environmental protection is an inherently complex challenge requiring broad societal participation, the effective enforcement of the Code depends on diverse actors. Consequently, unjustified restrictions on public interest litigation risk undermining the Code’s effectiveness, and should be addressed.
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Appendix: Key Articles of the Code Addressing Public Interest Litigation
Article 147
The state encourages social organizations and volunteers to engage in public interest activities for ecological and environmental protection in accordance with the law. Where the public interest is harmed by environmental pollution, ecological destruction, or similar acts, social organizations meeting the following conditions may institute civil public interest litigation before a people's court:
(1) They are lawfully registered with the civil affairs department of a people's government at or above the city level with districts; and
(2) They have specialized in public interest activities for ecological and environmental protection for five consecutive years or more and have no record of legal violations.
Where a social organization meeting the conditions specified in the preceding paragraph institutes such litigation, the people's court shall accept the case in accordance with the law.
Social organizations instituting such litigation shall not seek economic gain therefrom.
Article 1073
Where, in violation of legal provisions, environmental pollution or ecological destruction, etc., causes losses to the state, the local people's government at or above the city level with district divisions or the department or institution designated by it shall conduct consultations with the responsible party in accordance with relevant provisions, demanding that the responsible party bear compensation liability for the ecological and environmental damage; if no agreement is reached through consultation, the government, department, or institution may institute litigation in a people's court. Where the local people's government, department, or institution specified in the preceding paragraph fails to conduct consultations, or fails to initiate litigation after consultations fail to reach an agreement, the people's procuratorate may institute proceedings before a people's court against the responsible party in accordance with the law.
Article 1074
Where pollution of the marine environment or destruction of marine ecology causes losses to the state, the department exercising the supervisory and administrative power over the marine ecological environment pursuant to this Law shall claim compensation for the damage from the responsible party and may institute proceedings before a people's court.
Where the responsible party fails to bear compensation liability for the damage, and the department specified in the preceding paragraph fails to institute litigation, the people's procuratorate may institute proceedings before a people's court in accordance with the law.
Article 1075
Where, in violation of legal provisions, environmental pollution or ecological destruction, etc., harms the public interest, the people's procuratorate or a social organization that meets the requirements of this law may institute proceedings before a people's court in accordance with the law.
Article 1081
An authority or organization instituting proceedings before a people’s court pursuant to Articles 1073 or 1075 of this law shall provide the evidence of the following:
(1) that the actor committed acts such as environmental pollution or ecological destruction;
(2) that the act violated legal provisions;
(3) The circumstances of the ecological and environmental damage;
(4) the costs of ecological or environmental losses, the costs of ecological restoration, and other related costs; and
(5) Other matters that shall be proven.
Where a lawsuit is instituted pursuant to Article 1074 of this Code, evidence of the matters specified in Item (1) and Items (3) through (5) of the preceding paragraph shall be provided.
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Feng Ge is a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute and the former head of the legal department at Friends of Nature, a Chinese nongovernmental organization that has successfully brought many environmental public interest legal claims.
Suggested Citation:
Feng Ge, “China’s New Environmental Governance Framework and the Future of Public Interest Litigation,” USALI Perspectives, 6, No. 8, March 18, 2026, https://usali.org/usali-perspectives-blog/chinas-new-environmental-governance-framework-and-the-future-of-public-interest-litigation.
The views expressed in USALI Perspectives are those of the authors, and do not represent those of USALI or NYU.
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