Tackling Climate Change in China: A Hybrid Approach

This article argues that climate change policies should be designed as far as possible with the involvement of civil society at large, as it is an existential problem that concerns the whole of humanity. It is suggested that in the Chinese context, the legal system and political decision-making processes could better address climate change for example, through the participatory processes promoted by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development 1992 and subsequent instruments. The article explores the possibility of adopting a hybrid approach in China by developing an interactive platform linking the relevant components of civil society in order to gather critical expertise and insights from the community as a whole. A hybrid approach would be directed at combining the current top-down approach with a bottom-up approach, which would potentially contribute to an increase in transparency and accountability in legislative and political decision-making processes to produce the best possible legal approaches and policy strategies for addressing climate change.