Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 2, 2022

China’s Protected Area System in the Systematization of Environmental Laws

(Abstract)

Du Qun

The construction of China’s protected area system is an important progress of ecological protection in its building of an ecological civilization. The systematization of environmental law in the context of codification of environmental laws should take this progress into consideration. In practice, China’s protected area system has developed a dual regulatory structure based on the system of protected area and the “red line of ecological protection system in the natural ecological spatial pattern.” Since the protected area system, the natural ecological space and the red line of ecological protection have a shared feature of rule-of-law based logic, the environmental law system should make corresponding and integrated adjustments. The main path is to build a new jurisdiction under an “empirical nature conservation law” that protects the authenticity of nature and upholds spatial justice. An empirical nature protection law adjusted to the protected area system can also contribute to the systematization of environmental laws, because the logical analysis of the rule of law, which is based on the legal regulation of labor behaviors and their purpose, can also be applied to the construction of the basic jurisdiction of the environmental law system, and provide a jurisprudential explanation for the positioning of empirical nature protection law as a secondary legal regulation in the environmental law system.