Environmental Code: Its Positioning and Codification

In the dimension of history, environmental protection law has developed from the laws concerning protecting environment to the special law of environmental protection. In this process, it has been beset by an identity crisis doubting its independence. The crisis originated from the ever-changing ecological environment, of which it tried to control, which means that the law-making must be strongly adjustable, and the process of protecting environment could timely adjusted to the new ecological knowledge. In order to be effective, the positioning of environmental law must be transformed from the present substantive law to the future procedural law. The former emphasizes “looking back” to sum up the past experience, while the latter suggests “looking forward” to face with the future. Based on the historical line and the reasonable positioning of the environmental protection law, it is easy to find that the codification of environmental law is uneasy, and a rational codification should be developed with procedure guarantee as its center.