Environmental Governance:A Perspective from IndustrialCivilization to Ecological Civilization

摘要

The key of environmental governance is to tackle the environment-developmentrelationship so to achieve sustainability. This paper reveals that the traditional concept ofenvironmental governance that took hold in the industrial era is rooted in the traditionaldevelopment paradigm and theory that conflict environmental protection with economicdevelopment. Dilemmas exist not only between the environment and development, but in theresource distribution between current and future generations and in the sharing of globalenvironmental responsibilities among countries. Consequently, in the traditional industrialera, environmental governance mainly focused on broadening the space of compromiseby facilitating technology progress and raising efficiency, which is hard to solve theunderlying environment-development conflict. Under the concept of ecological civilization,environmental governance brings about a mutually-beneficial relationship betweenenvironmental protection and economic development and thus could turn environmentalburden into a shared opportunity among countries, and into a “win-win” relationshipbetween current and future generations.