Basic law + separate laws and codification are the two modes countries worldwide adopted for enacting environmental legislation in line with their national circumstances and legal traditions. Following the goal of establishing a modern environmental governance system, the mode moderate codification should be China's choice for compiling an environmental code. Moderate codification is a dynamic and open substantive code-compiling mode. Based on idea changes and method innovations, it builds a basic logic system with the goal value as the core and the tool value as the technical method. An environmental code following the moderate codification mode can use the structure of General—Specifics. The General Part extracts common factors and elaborates the legislative purposes, basic principles, management rules and lead measures that dominate the overall situations and are universally applicable. Then each Specific Part (they form Specifics) compiles and integrates the relevant prevailing laws and regulations, and further regulate environmental factors. Therefore, the cornerstone concept of eco-environment should be defined and the environmental legal relationships should be clarified. Environmental code derives from dual source-of-law and considers sustainable development as its value goal, takes the eco-environment as its cornerstone concept, and regards the legal relationship as its systematic tool for constructing its framework system.
The success in compiling China's Civil Code benefits from factors such as China's complete system of civil law statutes, the methodology of the Pandekten System, and the private-law attributes of civil laws, etc. To construct the framework of China's environmental code, it is necessary to reference that success for theoretical and structural innovations. In addition, the fundamental features and inherent issues of China's existing environmental law system, such as its breadth, the extensiveness of origins of environmental law, the multiple implication of environmental legal relations, and the compound nature of the environmental legal liability system, should be taken into account. The layout structure of General—Specifics should be adopted for compiling China's environmental code, while moderate codification and extraction of the common factor (vor die Klammer zu ziehen) for connection with applicable rules of specific laws should serve as construction principles and methods for compiling the framework of China's environmental code. The environmental code should have five parts: General ; Pollution Prevention and Control ; Nature Conservation ; Green and Low-Carbon Development ; and Ecological and Environmental Responsibility.
Order comes first in legal values, while laws should maintain the consistency and stability of order. The proposed China's environmental code (Code) shall restate the prevailing environmental legal norms and optimize the prevailing environmental legal order. From the perspective of stabilizing the legal order, common regulations of General Part of the Code should connect with the constitution and the prevailing environmental laws, determine the legal values of the Code-governing environment, and provide the foundation and basic framework for each subsequent part of the Code. Therefore, common regulations of the Code should recognize and support the constitution order and bolster the emerging eco-environment legal order relating to the eco-civilization construction. They should be coherent, value-orientated, and independent, inheriting the general framework of the prevailing Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and other specific environmental laws, and developing the applicable norms. Specifically, consistently with the legislative purposes, the Code common regulations should recognize the objectives of construction of eco-civilization and pursuit of social, economic and ecological sustainable development, and this pursuit should be carried out based on the basic principles; the application scope of ecological environment should be redefined in order to maintain the ecological value and overall ecological order; the clause on basic environmental obligations and the clause on citizens' environmental rights should be defined with the national environmental protection obligations as the main thread and the multi-player legal relationship as the framework; and the national environmental protection obligations should be preliminarily delivered with three clauses: national environmental protection financial support, environmental publicity and education, and global environmental governance.
It is not currently appropriate to make detailed provisions on an ecological and environmental dissension settlement mechanism in the would-be China's environmental code (Code), given the prevailing mechanism status in China. Such provisions need to be appropriately selected under the philosophy of moderate codification, and various methods should be adopted according to the actual situation of the specific system. Contradictions between various systems should be removed in the compiling of this Code, which eventually would make an ecological and environmental dissension settlement mechanism with complementary functions and procedural coordination, ensuring that ecological and environmental dissensions can be smoothly resolved within the updated framework, and damaged interests can be fully remedied.
The legal protection of nature has progressed from a separated to integrated protection of resources and environment. Looking at nature from a dialectical and unified perspective, sustainable development requires such integrated protection of the ecosystem for public sharing of natural wealth, convergence of governance of environment and resources, and promotion of ecosystem-based integrated management of environment and resources. China's Nature and Ecology Protection Law is gradually moving towards comprehensive governance for protection of the overall ecosystem. We must work harder to make such a comprehensive governance possible. Thus, China's environmental code (Code) must be moderately developed, including choosing the right title, the scope of work, the objectives and the compiling mode, and establishing a multi-level and diverse integrated system, and addressing five major relationships.
The sustainable development integrity, national development goals, and legislative status quo have determined that the Green and Low-Carbon Development Part must be designed and incorporated into the China's Environmental Code (Code). The theoretical evolution in the action field, system composition, value function, and operation mechanism of the Environmental Law, as well as the practice development of the Environmental Protection Law legislation, enforcement, and judicial practices have laid a solid theoretical and practical foundation for the incorporation of green and lowcarbon development into the Code. The institutional layout of green and low-carbon development should respect and highlight its own traits. Furthermore, it is important to stress communication and coordination with other parts of the Code, follow the laws of energy development and utilization, and satisfy the inherent requirements of raw material reduction, reuse, and recycle. The layout method should abide by the general principle of general first, specific second; domestic first, international second; defined first, undefined second with decomposition goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality as an exception. The layout effect of the flexibility first, rigidity second is pursued. The chapters of General Provisions, Cleaner Production Green Circulation, Green Consumption, Support and Supervision, and International Cooperation, and Climate Change Response, are specifically designed. Efforts are made to improve new systems, such as strategies and standards for green and low-carbon development, green logistics, energy performance contracting, green finance, carbon emissions trading, and energy early warning.
This paper discusses two questions: Is a specific part on ecological and environmental responsibility a common practice and trend in foreign environmental codes? How are its compiling principles and scope of work determined, and would administrative legal responsibility be arranged elsewhere than in this part?