UPDATE (Mar. 12, 2026): We have updated this post in accordance with the Code’s final text. The original version is archived here.
Editor’s Note: This post is a collaboration between NPC Observer and a group of Chinese environmental law scholars led by Feng Ge, currently a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of NYU School of Law. The other members are Jiaying Deng, Xinyu Jia, Jingxian Zhang, and Gaachi Liang. This post was written by Changhao Wei and draws on materials prepared by those scholars.
On March 12, 2026, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the Ecological and Environmental Code (Code) [生态环境法典] to partially codify, with updates, China’s existing environmental laws and regulations. It is China’s second formal legal code, after the 2020 Civil Code [民法典]. The Communist Party views the latter’s enactment as a success. In 2021, Xi Jinping praised it as a “model” for codification and called for codifying other areas of law where “conditions are ripe.”
In fall 2023, the Code was chosen as the next codification project, likely due to its strong political and legal foundations. Environmental protection has been a top priority for the Party under Xi Jinping, whose “Thought on Ecological Civilization” was coined in 2018 as a component of his overarching political thought. China’s environmental law is also fairly well developed. Today, the country boasts over 30 environmental statutes, more than 100 State Council–issued administrative regulations, and many more ministerial rules and policy documents.
Viewing the Code as both a “paramount political and legislative task,” the legislature has moved the process along at a rapid pace. Less than two years after drafting began, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) first reviewed the Code in April 2025. It then divided the Code into two parts and discussed them separately in September and October 2025. In December, it took up the whole Code again and decided to refer it to the full NPC. The NPCSC sought public comment after each review, but ended up receiving only 21,919 comments from a cumulative 6,927 people—a relatively low level of participation typical of environmental legislation.
During the process, the NPCSC Party Group reported to the Party leadership four times on the Code’s legislative timetable, structure, and key provisions, among other matters. In March 2025, the Politburo Standing Committee greenlit the bill prior to its initial review.
The Code consists of five Parts. Part I (General Provisions) lays out the Code’s general principles and fundamental regulatory schemes, whereas Part V (Legal Liability and Supplementary Provisions) prescribes the penalties for violations. Parts II–IV form the Code’s three pillars: “Pollution Prevention and Control,” “Ecological Conservation,” and “Green and Low-Carbon Development.”
The Code follows what is officially termed a “moderate codification” [适度法典化] approach. As discussed below, only the following 10 environmental statutes are incorporated in full (each statute’s years of enactment and latest major update are shown in parentheses):
- Environmental Protection Law [环境保护法] (1989, 2014)
- Environmental Impact Assessment Law [环境影响评价法] (2002, N/A)
- Marine Environmental Protection Law [海洋环境保护法] (1982, 2023)
- Law on the Prevention and Control of Air Pollution [大气污染防治法] (1987, 2015)
- Law on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution [水污染防治法] (1984, 2017)
- Law on the Prevention and Control of Soil Pollution [土壤污染防治法] (2018, N/A)
- Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Wastes [固体废物污染环境防治法] (1995, 2020)
- Law on the Prevention and Control of Noise Pollution [噪声污染防治法] (1996, 2021)
- Law on the Prevention and Control of Radioactive Pollution [放射性污染防治法] (2003, N/A)
- Cleaner Production Promotion Law [清洁生产促进法] (2002, 2012)
Other statutes see only their core provisions duplicated or referenced in the Code and will remain in force. At the same time, the Code also revises those incorporated rules and add new provisions, particularly with respect to climate change, which currently lacks a governing statute.
The Code contains 1242 articles, totaling over 15,000 Chinese characters—over 50% longer than the already voluminous Civil Code. We are working on a detailed analysis of the Code, but that will take some time. In the meantime, we present this first look with a narrower focus: beyond introducing the Code’s background, we will offer a brief overview of each Part and highlight four aspects of the Code worth noting.
Structure & Codification Approach
In this section, we take a closer look at the Code’s structure: what each Part covers and how it relates to existing legal authorities. Each Part’s top-level subdivisions (subparts for Part II, and chapters for the others) are listed in tables; lower-level subdivisions are not always included.
Part I: General Provisions (Arts. 1–147)
Part I is designed to “command” [统领] the other Parts. It sets forth basic provisions, such as key definitions and the Code’s scope of application, as well as core schemes of environmental governance, such as environmental impact assessment. Except for Chapters V and VI, the chapters of this Part are largely based on the Environmental Protection Law. Chapter V substantially codifies the Environmental Impact Assessment Law, whereas Chapter VI incorporates the core provisions of the State Council’s 2024 Ecological Protection Compensation Regulations [生态保护补偿条例].
| Ch. # | Heading | Subdivisions |
|---|---|---|
| I | Basic Provisions | |
| II | Supervision and Administration | Sections × 2 |
| III | Planning and Zone-Based Ecological and Environmental Management and Control | |
| IV | Standards and Monitoring | |
| V | Ecological and Environmental Impact Assessment | Sections × 3 |
| VI | Ecological Protection Compensation | |
| VII | Response to Ecological and Environmental Emergencies | |
| VIII | Safeguard Measures | |
| IX | Information Disclosure and Public Participation |
Part II: Pollution Prevention and Control (Arts. 148–673)
Part II mainly codifies the substantive provisions of existing anti-pollution laws—penalties provisions are consolidated in Part V instead—along with changes and additions. Subpart I provides for common schemes, such as the pollution-discharge permitting regime. Subparts II–VIII correspond to existing statutes governing air, water, marine, soil, solid-waste, noise, and radioactive pollution, respectively. Subpart IX introduces basic regulatory schemes for three additional types of pollution: chemical substances, electromagnetic radiation, and light pollution.
| Subpt. # | Heading | Subdivisions |
|---|---|---|
| I | General Principles | Chapters × 2 |
| II | Air Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 4 (one with 5 Sections) |
| III | Water Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 4 (one with 4 Sections) |
| IV | Marine Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 5 |
| V | Soil Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 3 (one with 3 Sections) |
| VI | Solid-Waste Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 5 |
| VII | Noise Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 5 |
| VIII | Radioactive Pollution Prevention and Control | Chapters × 5 |
| IX | Risk Control of Chemical-Substance Pollution, and Prevention and Control of Electromagnetic-Radiation Pollution and Light Pollution | Chapters × 3 |
Part III: Ecological Conservation (Arts. 674–937)
Unlike the first two Parts, Part III does not codify any statute in full. Rather, it incorporates only the “gist” [要旨] of about two dozen existing laws and lower-level authorities on ecological conservation or natural resources—that is, skeletal versions of their core regulatory schemes. The two sections of Chapter VI, for example, correspond to the Soil and Water Conservation Law [水土保持法] and the Law on the Prevention and Control of Desertification [防沙治沙法]. To facilitate further discussion below, the following table also lists this Part’s section headings.
| Ch. # | Heading | Subdivisions |
|---|---|---|
| I | General Provisions | |
| II | Ecosystem Protection | Sections × 6: “Forests,” “Grasslands,” “Wetlands,” “Oceans and Offshore Islands,” “Rivers and Lakes,” “Deserts” |
| III | Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources | Sections × 5: “Land Resources,” “Mineral Resources,” “Water Resources,” “Fishery Resources,” and “Other Natural Resources” |
| IV | Species Protection | Sections × 3: “Protection of Wild Animals,” “Protection of Wild Plants,” and “Prevention and Control of Invasive Alien Species” |
| V | Protection of Important Geographic Units | Sections × 2: “Natural Protected Areas” and “Yangtze River, Yellow River, Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, and Other Important River Basins and Regions” |
| VI | Prevention and Control of Ecological Degradation | Sections × 2: “Soil and Water Conservation” and “Prevention and Control of Desertification” |
| VII | Ecological Restoration |
Part IV: Green and Low-Carbon Development (Arts. 938–1051)
Part IV covers three main topics: the circular economy, energy transition, and climate change. Chapter II, Section 2 is substantially based on the Cleaner Production Promotion Law, which will be repealed. That Chapter also incorporates much of the Circular Economy Promotion Law [循环经济促进法], which will remain as a separate statute. The rest of this Part selectively absorbs the core provisions of existing energy laws, while elevating key formulations and regulatory schemes from lower-level legislation and policy documents into statutory rules, particularly in Chapter IV.
| Ch. # | Heading | Subdivisions |
|---|---|---|
| I | General Provisions | |
| II | Development of Circular Economy | Sections × 4 |
| III | Energy Conservation, and Green and Low-Carbon Transition | Sections × 3 |
| IV | Addressing Climate Change | Sections × 4 |
Part V: Legal Liability and Supplementary Provisions (Arts. 1051–1242)
Part V spells out the consequences of violating the Code. Chapter I lays out general liability rules (e.g., statutes of limitations) and enforcement mechanisms (e.g., public interest litigation). Chapter II, divided into 14 sections, specifies the administrative punishments for flouting the substantive requirements of the preceding Parts. It primarily codifies the penalty provisions of the ten laws it repeals, while also imposing new punishments.
| Ch. # | Heading | Subdivisions |
|---|---|---|
| I | General Rules of Legal Liability | Sections × 3 |
| II | Specific Rules of Legal Liability | Sections × 14 |
| III | Supplementary Provisions |
For Now, Four Key Takeaways
First, the Code weakens environmental public interest litigation (EPIL). Since 2015, China has allowed qualified environmental organizations to file public-interest lawsuits even though they suffer no direct harm. While preserving this scheme, the Code restricts EPIL with new evidentiary requirements. At the time of filing, public-interest plaintiffs must (1) show that environmental damage has occurred and (2) quantify the costs of that damage, restoration, and other related expenses. The first requirement effectively bars EPIL aimed at preventing environmental damage before it occurs. Such preventive litigation is currently permitted under the Supreme People’s Court’s rules and has played an indispensable role in averting irreversible ecological damage. For example, China’s first preventive EPIL case, filed in 2017, successfully halted the construction of a dam that would have flooded the largest remaining habitat of the endangered green peafowl. The second evidentiary requirement, too, deals a serious blow to EPIL. Establishing the relevant costs often involves a complex, costly, and time-consuming process. Requiring such evidence at the filing stage could delay many cases from reaching court, while the financial burden of carrying out the necessary studies and evaluations could deter environmental organizations from pursuing certain cases altogether.
Second, the Code would address three new types of pollution in the three sections of Part II, Chapter IX.
- Section I adopts a risk-based approach to regulating chemical substances. It grants the State Council legislative authority to regulate their entire lifecycle and incorporates two existing regulatory schemes under ministerial rules and policy documents: designating new chemical pollutants for priority control and requiring pre-marketing registration for new chemical substances. Violations carry hefty fines and the possible suspension of business operations.
- Section II creates a basic regulatory framework for non-ionizing radiation: lower-energy radiation such as radio waves and microwaves. (Ionizing radiation, such as that produced by nuclear fission, is regulated by Subpart VIII instead.) This Section authorizes the national standardization authority, together with sectoral regulators, to set emission limits for products capable of emitting non-ionizing radiation. The manufacture, importation, and sale of noncompliant products are prohibited. This Section also introduces a tiered regime for regulating radiation-emitting facilities, depending on their emission levels and environmental impact. Their operators must ensure that radiation emissions remain within national standards and must adopt required measures to prevent or reduce radiation pollution. (As a side note, the NPCSC plans to enact a dedicated law to address electromagnetic radiation pollution.)
- Section III tackles light pollution, defined as the excessive or inappropriate use of artificial lighting, or the improper alteration of natural lighting conditions, that interferes with human visual perception in surrounding areas. It requires governments to consider the potential impacts of light pollution in spatial planning and authorizes the national standardization authority to set permissible light-intensity limits for lighting products, outdoor displays, traffic lighting, and building materials. On pain of (relatively small) fines, this Section also requires operators of lighting installations—including advertising screens, billboards, roads, stadiums, and construction sites—to take effective measures to prevent excessive illumination.
Third, the Code falls short of the “holistic and systematic” ecological conservation promised in Part III. Scholars have identified two key flaws in its codification approach. The first is that this Part fails to adopt an approach consistent with ecological principles, instead relying on a false dichotomy between ecosystems and natural resources. For instance, it protects wetlands, oceans, rivers, and lakes as ecosystems (under Chapter II), while regulating water and fisheries as natural resources (under Chapter III)—a distinction that one leading scholar calls “logically untenable.” In addition, this Part reproduces the fragmented structure of existing sectoral statutes through mechanical “transplantation.” Logging, for example, is regulated under ostensibly different regimes spread across six sections in four chapters. Because the Code’s drafters fail to fundamentally rethink the existing statutory regime, Part III contains overlaps and internal inconsistencies—the very problems that codification is meant to resolve.
Finally, the Code introduces a general statutory framework for climate governance in Part IV, Chapter IV, laying the foundation for a future dedicated climate law. For climate change mitigation, this Chapter requires the integration of carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality goals into national development plans and establishes a scheme to control the total amount and intensity of carbon emissions. It also codifies key mitigation mechanisms, including carbon accounting, product carbon-footprint management, and the monitoring and enhancement of carbon sinks (e.g., forests, wetlands, and soils). Notably, the Code elevates China’s nascent carbon emission trading system into a statutory scheme, under which key emitters must surrender emissions allowances based on verified annual emissions reports. Failing to report emissions data or surrender required allowances could result in substantial fines and suspension of operations. For climate change adaptation, the Code requires relevant authorities to formulate national and local adaptation plans, incorporate climate risks into spatial planning, and assess climate impacts on ecosystems and key sectors. This Chapter also articulates general goals for improving early-warning and response systems for disasters, extreme weather events, and climate-sensitive diseases. It concludes by codifying China’s position on international climate cooperation and governance.