Planning and Rationalization of Public Participation in China’s Environmental Management

Abstract

In China, public participation is an essential and necessary element enshrined in many environmental management policies and laws. However, there are no specific and detailed procedures and guidelines to regulate the implementation of public participation. So far, public participation has only been explicitly stipulated as a requirement in the “Law of People’s Republic of China on Environmental Impact Assessment.” The legal framework was established to safeguard the right of access to environmental information, right of participation, and right of supervision for the public, after the promulgation and put into effectiveness of the ”Provisional Measures on Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessment” and the “Measures for the Disclosure of Environmental Information (on Trial),” where means of public participation, such as public survey, expert consultation, public meeting, argumentation, and public hearing, were clearly specified in these directives. However, no concrete legal guidance for public participation implementation has been written, yet. Therefore, this study is trying to construct a conceptual design flowchart for public participation in environmental management and to construct a feasible and executable prototype for public participation in environmental management, through the proposal of public participation planning for eight environmental management schemes. Furthermore, several major tasks for rationalization of public participation in environmental management are recommended to enhance the development and improvement of public participation in environmental management, in China.Key words: Public participation; Disclosure of environmental information; Eight environmental management schemes; Pre-participation; Progress-participation; Post-participation; Self-participation; Rationalization