Mobilising for environmental justice in China

Abstract

This article assesses the situation of environmental rights in China in terms of political interactions and their implications for Chinese politics. Environmental justice is primarily conceived as equity in access to environmental goods and fairness in social processes dealing with market or government failures to provide environmental security. The argument is that environmental deterioration has a significant influence on the pattern of inequalities in the PRC, occasionally creating situations of extreme injustice. The developments involving legislation, collective action, public participation and litigation over the last decade have served as converging factors to allow for some significant improvements in environmental policymaking procedures. Although these developments have remained far from reversing the general state of the environment in China, they have introduced significant changes in the patterns of interaction among policy stakeholders.