China makes developers pay compensation for their ecological impacts – here's how this unique scheme works

By Shuo Gao, PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, University of Oxford
Eleanor Jane Milner-Gulland, Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity, University of Oxford
Joseph William Bull, Associate Professor in Climate Change Biology, University of Oxford
Sophus zu Ermgassen, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oxford

In 2017, the Chinese environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, sued the developer of a dam in Yunnan province in the country’s south west. The NGO alleged that the project’s environmental impact assessment had failed to fully capture how the dam would affect the surrounding rainforest, and particularly the endangered green peafowl that lives there. This weak assessment report was one reason why the project was granted consent and even highlighted as best practice by the local government.

In 2020 a court…

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