Analysis Of The Legal Ways For China To Fulfill Its International Obligations In Tackling Climate Change

Global climate change is one of the most serious problems to humanity, which isthreatening to the survival and development of humanity. In response to this globalproblem, the international community has begun to build the cooperation betweendifferent countries since from the1970s. After years of efforts, the global communityhas formulated the international climate legal mechanism based on the UnitedNations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the KyotoProtocol (KP). Under this mechanism, according to the principle of common butdifferentiated responsibilities, China undertakes voluntary emission reductionobligations different from the developed countries. The obligations are mostly generaland principled, instead of specific and mandatory. However, as a responsibledeveloping country, China always takes a positive attitude towards emissionreduction, and has made a significant contribution to control greenhouse gasemissions, which was praised by the international community. By way of studying theobligations of China under the existing international climate legal mechanism, thisthesis mainly focuses on the status, challenge and legal paths to promote capability offulfilling the international climate obligations of China, in order to provide a morereasonable reference from the legal perspective.This thesis is divided into three parts:The first part is mainly about the international obligations of China under theexisting international climate legal mechanism. The author extracts the content of theobligation of the climate from UNFCCC and KP, including making and implementingthe plans in response to climate change, preparing the national bulletin, promotingconstruction of clean development mechanism project, and so on.The second part is mainly about the status and the difficulties faced by China tofulfill the international climate obligations. The status contains technologicalinnovation, optimizing the energy structure and other aspects of policy adjustments,the legislative practice, the preparation of national bulletin, clean developmentmechanism practice. The difficulties contain the challenge from domestic tasks of development and economic structure, inadequate legal mechanisms, internationalpressure for global climate governance.The third part researches in the legal paths to promote capability of fulfilling theinternational climate obligation of China. First, China should establish the scientificconcept of development as the Guiding ideology, and establish common butdifferentiated responsibilities, sustainable development and mitigation equalsadaptation as the basic principles. And at the same time, we should improve thelegislation system dealing with climate change, in order to build legislation system ofChinese characteristics. Secondly, we should improve the enforcement of law dealingwith climate change by way of strengthening the administrative enforcement,improving the environmental tort judicial relief system and improving the awarenessof the public.As the second largest economy and the second largest emitter of carbon dioxidein the world, how to effectively deal with the issue of climate change is currently avery difficult and important issue to China. Before the formation of the newcompliance mechanism, China will continue to actively respond to global climatechange, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to achieve economic development intransition to a low carbon, and ultimately to achieve sustainable development with awide range of operational arrangements.