Ecological civilisation constitutionalised: has the time come for China to constitutionalise environmental rights?

Recent years have witnessed the trend of entrenching environment-related rights in national constitutions. Yet, in its constitutional amendments in 2018, the People’s Republic of China ran counter to such an emerging global trend and incorporated ‘ecological civilisation’ instead. Against the background of constitutionalising environmental rights being ‘declared’ around the world as ‘an idea whose time has come’, this article examines whether the time has come for China to do so. Analysis is mainly conducted surrounding environmental governance before and after China’s constitutionalisation of ecological civilisation, with an emphasis on institutional weaknesses. It demonstrates that environmental governance in China, despite the constitutional entrenchment of ecological civilisation, remains institutionally fragile, due to environmental administrative deficits under the top-down state mandate of constructing ecological civilisation. Hence the necessity to facilitate robust environmental governance empowered by a ‘rights’ discourse indicates that theoretically the time has come for China to constitutionalise environmental rights. However, given ­China’s non-liberal political-legal system and collectivity-emphasised Confucian culture, this article further argues that environmental rights need to be adapted to fit China’s particular context to increase the constitutionalisation possibility.