Introduction to the Special Issue on Ecological Civilization and Environmental Governance

This special issue marks the end of the fourth year of publication of our journal. It also marks an extraordinary year in terms of the urgent need for greatly enhanced regulation of the way that humans interact with the natural environment on a global and national basis. It is thus serendipitous that the focus of this special issue is a discussion of the concept of ecological civilization and environmental governance.1 Ecological civilization first emerged in the scientific literature in the 1980s, and has since that time attracted a great deal of academic comment from across the disciplines, including environmental law and political science. At the outset, we can recognise that ecological civilization can be broadly equated with the internationally accepted concept of ‘sustainable development’. Sustainable development has, of course, been part of China’s environmental lexicon since 1994, when China’s Agenda 21 was published.2 As noted by Prof. QIN Tianbao: ‘In 2012, China put forward the concept “eco-civilization”, which is regarded as the Chinese expression of sustainable development, further promoting the development of the principle of Sustainable Development.’3 Ecological civilization certainly incorporates the