Review of the Legislation on Public Participation in EIA in China: From Disorder to Normalization

Abstract

China began to implement environment impact assessment (hereinafter referred to as EIA) in the late 1970s; however, public participation had not been introduced into EIA procedure until 10 years later. Accordingly, since the late 1990s, public participation in EIA in China started from scratch and has gone through the development process from disorder to normalization. China’s early legislation on public participation in EIA was too vague and impractical, which led to the disorder of practice in public participation in EIA. In 2006, China enacted special measures, making public participation in EIA achieve a preliminary legalization. Deep-seated problems in the practice of public participation in EIA in recent years, such as the lack of validity and authenticity of public participation, have presented new challenges for the legislation on public participation in EIA. China has begun to revise the Interim Measures, intending to resolve core issues, such as the scope of application for public participation in EIA, the criteria for how “fully” the public opinions are solicited, and the effect of public opinions, so as to improve the authenticity and validity of public participation.