Promoting green transformation of development through the rule of law
2024-06-05
Green is the foundation for high-quality development, and building a beautiful China requires accelerating the green transformation of the development mode. On the one hand, restrictions should be imposed on high pollution, high energy consumption behaviors or technologies; On the other hand, promoting green technological innovation and advanced green technologies such as low pollution and low energy consumption. To achieve the above goals, it is necessary to focus on strengthening the guarantee of the rule of law, and optimize it at the levels of legislation, law enforcement, judiciary, and compliance. Good law is the prerequisite for good governance, and scientific legislation is the institutional support for the green transformation of development methods. Currently, China has formed a legal and regulatory system in the field of ecological environment, led by the Environmental Protection Law. However, there is still much room for improvement in promoting green transformation of development through legislation. From a formal perspective, current legislation places more emphasis on regulating high pollution and high emission behaviors, while the promotion mechanism for ecological environment protection benefits such as pollution purification and carbon dioxide absorption is relatively weak. From the perspective of content, laws such as the Circular Economy Promotion Law and the Clean Production Promotion Law are specifically aimed at legislation for green development and transformation. However, in fact, clean production is often also a component of the circular economy, and separate legislation can easily lead to the decentralization of the legal system, making it difficult to form a cohesive force. In this regard, we should adhere to the concept that "green mountains and clear waters are like mountains of gold and silver", and improve it from both the content and form levels. Specifically, at the content level, we should continue to explore the mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products, and through institutionalized means, open up channels for the transformation of ecological value into economic value, and then spontaneously guide society to develop towards a resource-saving and environmentally friendly society through internal market mechanisms. At the formal level, taking advantage of the compilation opportunity of the Ecological Environment Code, legal norms related to green and low-carbon development, such as the Circular Economy Promotion Law and the Clean Production Promotion Law, can be appropriately integrated to promote the formation of a complete legal regulatory system. In addition, the subjective initiative of local legislation can be appropriately utilized to provide legal guarantees for promoting the green transformation of development modes. The Shanghai Development Mode Green Transformation Promotion Regulations stipulate the basic management system and guarantee measures for green transformation of development modes, and provide comprehensive guidance for green transformation of development modes from energy development, industrial structure, and daily consumption, which helps to promote the transformation of development modes towards resource conservation and environmentally friendly green low-carbon models. The life of the law lies in its implementation, strict law enforcement is the key to the green transformation of the development mode, and fair justice is the guarantee for the green transformation of the development mode. From the perspective of law enforcement, the transformation of green development needs to start from two aspects: strengthening the supervision of illegal activities and strengthening green innovation services. The former means that administrative agencies should actively use emerging technologies such as big data to empower regulation, conduct dynamic monitoring of corporate emissions, timely detect illegal activities, and investigate and punish them. The latter means that administrative agencies should build a service-oriented government to clear obstacles for green innovation in enterprises. Specifically, efforts can be made from the following three aspects: first, to strengthen administrative service capabilities, reduce approval matters, and create a relaxed market environment for green innovation in enterprises; The second is to implement inclusive and prudent supervision. When certain emerging technologies do not touch the safety bottom line, they can be observed first and given moderate room for error tolerance; The third is to actively introduce economic incentive measures such as finance, taxation, pricing, finance, and government procurement to increase the driving force of green innovation for enterprises and guide them to strengthen green technology research and development. From a judicial perspective, the active role of the judiciary should be appropriately utilized to convey green and low-carbon values to society through the judiciary. In practice, some courts have reasonably exercised their initiative within the framework of the rule of law, allowing technological transformation to offset civil liability for ecological environment damage. This approach can achieve the goal of ecological environment restoration while also taking into account the practical difficulties of enterprises, which helps promote green and low-carbon innovation in enterprises and is worth promoting. National compliance with the law is the fundamental project of a rule of law society, and the green transformation of development ultimately depends on the formation of a green production and lifestyle for the entire population. On the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen green legal education and publicity, and improve the overall awareness of green living in society. Once the awareness of resource conservation and environmental protection is formed, it can not only reduce the demand for high polluting and high-energy consuming products, but also increase the demand for products that meet the requirements of green development, achieving positive incentives for green innovation. The relevant departments should effectively implement the legal responsibility system of "whoever enforces the law shall popularize the law", vigorously promote green and healthy lifestyles throughout society, guide the public to form good consumption habits, and lay a mass foundation for the green transformation of development methods. On the other hand, it is necessary to strengthen the compliance management of enterprise ecological environment and promote the green transformation of enterprise production. Enterprises are the main participants in socio-economic activities, as well as the main producers of pollutants and important inventors of green technologies. Strengthening the concept of enterprises complying with ecological and environmental laws and regulations, enhancing their awareness of green innovation, is conducive to reducing environmental pollution from the source, reducing energy consumption, and ultimately promoting the green transformation of development methods. It should be pointed out that currently, China's energy structure is still dominated by fossil fuels, with coal occupying the dominant position. The industrial structure is still biased towards high energy consumption and high emissions in the heavy industry sector. The goal of optimizing the energy structure and achieving green and low-carbon transformation of the industrial structure is still a long way to go. However, these challenges are also opportunities. The green transformation of development mode is not only an inevitable requirement for achieving harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, but also a new growth point for China's industrial upgrading, which deserves to be taken seriously. In recent years, the export share of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products in China has continued to increase, which is an example of helping China's foreign trade industry improve and upgrade. In this regard, we need to further strengthen the legal guarantee for the green transformation of the development mode, and promote the comprehensive greening of production, circulation, consumption and other links by consolidating the institutional foundation, so as to provide new momentum for cultivating and developing new quality productive forces, and assist in high-quality development and the construction of a beautiful China. (Le Xin She) (Author Qin Tianbao is Vice President and Secretary General of the Environmental Resources Law Research Association of the China Law Society, and Director of the Institute of Environmental Law at Wuhan University)
Edit：Ying Ying Responsible editor：Shen Chen
Source：http://www.legaldaily.com.cn
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