In the face of a series of reform tasks in the field of ecological civilization, environmental law should expand its scope and improve its quality, uphold fundamental principles while breaking new ground, optimize its regulatory system, and enhance its institutional functions, so as to achieve high-level protection through high-level rule of law and provide adequate legal safeguards for comprehensively advancing the building of a Beautiful China.

　　August 15 this year marks the second National Ecology Day. The establishment of National Ecology Day is intended to raise the ecological civilization awareness of the whole society and strengthen the public's conscious thought and action in protecting the ecological environment. In recent times, many places have carried out related themed activities to encourage the whole society to foster environmental awareness, care for the ecological environment, and jointly build a beautiful homeland with blue skies, green land, and clear waters.

　　A thriving ecology means a thriving civilization. The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese Modernization (hereinafter referred to as the Decision), deliberated and adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, emphasizes the need to deepen the reform of the ecological civilization system and sets out arrangements in three aspects: improving the foundational systems of ecological civilization, improving the ecological environment governance system, and improving the mechanisms for green and low-carbon development.

　　"Protecting the ecological environment with the strictest systems and the most rigorous rule of law" is the path to success in China's ecological civilization construction. "Adhering to law-based governance in all respects, deepening reform and advancing Chinese modernization on the track of rule of law, achieving unity between reform and rule of law, ensuring that major reforms have a legal basis and promptly elevating reform achievements into legal systems" is an important principle for further comprehensively deepening reform established by the Decision. In the face of a series of reform tasks in the field of ecological civilization, environmental law should expand its scope and improve its quality, uphold fundamental principles while breaking new ground, optimize its regulatory system, and enhance its institutional functions, so as to achieve high-level protection through high-level rule of law and provide adequate legal safeguards for comprehensively advancing the building of a Beautiful China.

　　Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's environmental rule of law has advanced by leaps and bounds and achieved historic breakthroughs. A series of major measures—including the revision of the Environmental Protection Law, reform of the ecological and environmental damage compensation system, ecological and environmental protection inspections, the incorporation of "ecological civilization" into the Constitution, and the reform of comprehensive law enforcement and vertical management of ecological and environmental supervision—have all struck at the crux of environmental problems, with achievements that have attracted worldwide attention and results that are evident to all. Among these, environmental legislation has been continuously improved, and a vast body of legal norms has now been formed, including 34 laws, more than 100 administrative regulations, and over 1,000 local regulations, with the ecological and environmental legal system initially taking shape.

　　However, most of the current environmental laws were enacted in the early period, while reform practice is advancing at a tremendous pace. Overall, the current laws still fall short of the goals and requirements of deepening the reform of the ecological civilization system. For example, the degree of systematization is insufficient, separate laws overlap and intersect, the systematicity and coordination among different institutional mechanisms need to be improved, many major reform measures proven effective in practice have not yet been incorporated into legislation, and some new issues and new fields urgently requiring solutions in practice still lack legal basis.

　　Against this background, the arrangements related to "deepening the reform of the ecological civilization system" in the Decision both set higher requirements for environmental legislation and point out its direction of development—using codification as the lever to expand the scope of regulation and include what should be included; integrating relevant legal norms and optimizing institutional mechanisms to bring into play the functions that should be performed; and, through the coordinated complementarity between the code and separate laws, achieving overall system optimization and efficiency improvement of environmental law.

　　First, compile an Ecological Environment Code focusing on major foundational institutional and mechanism issues, and improve the foundational systems of ecological civilization. The last sentence of the section "Improving the Foundational Systems of Ecological Civilization" in the Decision explicitly provides for "compiling an Ecological Environment Code," from which it can be seen that the state has placed high expectations and heavy responsibilities on it. The legislative task of improving the foundational systems of ecological civilization can only be undertaken by a code that serves as a cornerstone of the state. The compilation of the Ecological Environment Code should comprehensively incorporate and systematically provide for the relevant major institutions and mechanisms deployed in the Decision, laying a legal cornerstone for their sound implementation, so that the Ecological Environment Code truly becomes the foundational law and basic law in the field of ecological civilization construction.

　　Second, steadily enhance the systematicity and coordination of environmental legal systems through a two-pronged approach, and improve the ecological environment governance system. Improving the ecological environment governance system requires environmental law to be "comprehensive" and "coordinated." To this end, environmental legislation should, on the one hand, shore up weak links and strengthen legislation in new fields such as environmental risk control, governance of new pollutants, environmental information disclosure and credit supervision, and realization of the value of ecological products. On the other hand, it should focus on overall planning and coordination mechanisms, making coordinated arrangements for different legislation, systems, and mechanisms that are related in content and complementary in function, so as to form an overall synergy.

　　Third, advance in a tiered manner the gradual improvement of legislation related to green and low-carbon development and climate change, and improve the mechanisms for green and low-carbon development. Green and low-carbon development is an emerging field oriented toward the future, and relevant practice is still being explored; legislation in this area is weak, and conditions in many fields are not yet mature. In this regard, the author believes that principled, advocacy-oriented, and incentive-oriented provisions on relevant major issues should be made in the Ecological Environment Code, so as to provide a legitimacy basis and framework guidance for practical exploration, while specific rules should be left to separate laws to create in due course and gradually improve in light of actual conditions.