Fortunately, China Law & Policy was able to sit down with Rachel Stern, assistant professor of law and politics at UC Berkley and author of the amazing book, Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence .
cities that are the outcome of industrialization and economic development. They’re huge crisis events that really galvanize the public and draw attention to an issue area. So sure, I think the comparison is fair.
EL: And that’s what I think a lot of foreign journalists and China watchers kind of also looked at when they compared Beijing to London and New York. That they argue that these kind of incidents are necessary to get the society on board to promote environmental awareness and movements. But to what extent do you think China is different from London or the United States? Do you think the fact that China is a one-party state with a developing legal system will cause a different result?
What’s so different in China is that the opportunities for public participation are so much more limited. We’ll talk more about this but it’s really hard for NGOs to bring environmental litigation under the current legal system. So that’s really different than here in the United States where NRDC and the Sierra Club were really instrumental in some of the major pollution law suits in the 1960s and the 1970s. And of course there is no elections [in China]. That’s really different from Japan where the LDP started to take on environmental issues when they started losing elections over it. So that mechanism of accountability is somewhat broken in the Chinese case as well.
From a red China to a green China?
China’s new President Xi Jinping – ready to be responsive?
cancer villages, the fear of 2008 Olympics being a pollution nightmare for the government, there is in a way some accountability.
And you thought the 1990s was just a good time for this guy? Also boom time for Chinese legal drafters.
Please return to China Law & Policy for Parts 2 and 3 of our interview with Prof. Stern. In Part 2, Prof. Stern maps out what environmental litigation looks like in China today as well as discusses other alternatives to litigation that has been having more success. In Part 3, Prof. Stern concludes the interview with her analysis of international NGO’s work in China as well as what she sees for the future of environmental litigation in China.