Why Is China Appointing Judges to Combat Climate Change? | James K. Thornton | TED Countdown

Imagine a world in which China was an environmental leader.

That would be a more hopeful world, wouldn't it?

When we hear about China,

we usually hear about human rights, trade disputes, toxic pollution.

And I'm not here to dispute the news.

Instead, what I want to do

is share, with you, evidence, based on personal experience,

of where China is leading.

ClientEarth, the environmental law organization that I set up,

has a 15-person office in Beijing.

We work as trusted partners with the Ministry of Environment.

We train judges and we train prosecutors in environmental prosecutions.

Let me share with you how this all began.

In 2014,

I was invited to Brussels to meet a group of Chinese officials.

They said they wanted to meet CEOs of Western environmental groups

because they were looking to encourage more environmental groups in China.

Shortly after that, I was invited to Beijing

by the Supreme People's Court, the highest court in the land.

The judges were working on regulations for a new law

that would allow Chinese environmental NGOs

to sue polluting companies,

including those owned by the state.

They were interested in my advice

because of my extensive environmental litigation experience

in Europe and in America.

They wanted to know, they said,

what it would take to really make such a system work.

I found myself in a conference room in Beijing

with three justices of the Supreme Court

and senior officials of the Ministry of Environment

and the People's Congress, which is the Chinese parliament.

"Before we get into details," I said, "I want to compliment you.

It is amazing that you are writing a law

to allow Chinese environmental groups to sue polluting companies,

including those owned by the state.

This is revolutionary."

(Laughter)

The senior judge said, "Mr. Thornton, 'revolutionary' is a big word for us."

(Laughter)

So we laughed.

And in that human moment, I realized I could work with these people.

He said, "Consider it a sea change."

So for the next three months or so,

my team and I worked very closely with the judges,

designing recommendations for how to make the system really deliver

for citizens enforcing the law.

One of the key provisions we worked on involved costs.

Now, it costs money to bring environmental litigation,

and what really kills you is,

if, when you lose, you have to pay the other side's costs,

as you do in the UK.

We said this was only going to work for the Chinese environmental groups

if, when they won a case,

they had all of their costs paid by the polluters,

but when they lost, they would not have to pay any of the polluters’ costs.

Because, win or lose,

they were asserting the interests of the public at large.

Three months after that, I found myself back in a meeting in Beijing;

this time, in the Supreme Court building just off Tiananmen Square.

I was there with the head of the EU-China Environment Programme.

We were sitting at a white marble table that seemed to be 40 feet long.

Across from us were three Supreme Court judges.

A senior judge began the meeting

by saying that they had accepted almost all of our recommendations,

including the key recommendation on costs.

So at one stroke,

the Chinese system became friendlier to citizen environmental groups

trying to enforce the law

than many countries.

The senior judge then said, "What do you want to do next for China?"

Now on my prior trip,

I had learned that the Chinese had just appointed

1,000 environment court judges.

Now environment judges, specialists, are rare around the world.

In Europe, for example, there's just a handful in Scandinavia.

Their idea was that, by appointing all of these specialist judges,

they would hear a vast volume of cases

and raise the quality of the rule of law for the environment in China quickly.

"So," I said, "you might want to train those judges."

They then asked us to train the judges.

But I had never trained a judge in my life.

So I said, “Where shall we start?”

"With us," he said.

"With the Supreme Court?"

"Yes."

"But what do you want to learn?"

"Well," he said, "we want you to come back

and give us a seminar on climate litigation,

because you're an expert in that."

I said, "Gladly, but what's the thought behind your request?"

And he said,

“We want to know the best climate change cases in the world,

because we want to decide some of the best climate change cases

here in China."

Now I can assure you that I had never had such a conversation

with the Supreme Court in Washington --

(Laughter)

or even London or Paris.

Certainly nowhere other than Beijing.

So we teamed up with the head of the EU-China Environment Programme

to create a ClientEarth office in Beijing.

He then organized this training seminar for the Supreme Court,

where we discussed trends in climate litigation around the world.

He then organized training sessions

for all of those specialist environment court judges.

Now more such judges have been appointed in the meantime,

and as of today,

we've trained more than 1,500 of these judges.

(Applause)

About a year after we started training the judges,

a prosecutor came to our office and said,

"In that law that you helped write,

we, the prosecutors, got the right to sue the Chinese government

on behalf of the people, for environmental matters,

and we've never had the right to sue the government before."

ClientEarth, on the other hand, sues governments all the time.

(Laughter)

So they were asking us to share with them

our experience of suing governments.

This was the Chinese federal prosecutors asking us to train them

to sue the Chinese government.

(Laughter)

It is the most amazing request I've ever had.

(Laughter)

So, of course, we started working with them.

We've now trained over 1,200 prosecutors in how to bring environmental cases.

(Applause)

A few months ago, (Laughs)

we got a letter hand-delivered

from the prosecutors to our Beijing office.

Now what I'm told by my friends in Beijing,

ordinarily, the last thing in life you want to get

is a letter from the prosecutors.

This, however, was a thank-you note,

and what it said was "Thank you for your cooperation with us.

As a result of cooperating with you,

we have brought, in 2020 alone,

over 80,000 environmental cases."

Audience: Whoa.

(Applause)

80,000 cases, and the majority of those cases

were brought against government departments.

Now, the prosecutors have set up bureaus all over the country

to keep pushing out this level of cases

to raise compliance standards throughout the country.

Now if this isn't a revolution, it's certainly a sea change.

(Laughter)

Now, whenever I talk about China, I'm always asked about coal.

China burns more coal than any other country.

We're working on that.

Following the money, we've been working, for some years,

with the largest banks and financial institutions in China.

The argument we've been making

is that coal is simply a bad investment for them to make.

Recently, we had a two-day seminar in Beijing

for these institutions,

and it was very heartening to see

that that argument that coal is a bad investment

has now been internalized by these institutions

and taken into their own thinking.

When it comes to enforcement,

the prosecutors have a new, fantastic opportunity.

Recently, a government audit

found that many of the new coal-fired power stations

authorized in recent times in China

were authorized illegally by provincial officials

who wanted to boost their balance sheet.

Because these were illegally authorized,

they are a perfect enforcement target.

Now, another major problem is all of the coal-fired power stations

that Chinese companies have been planning to build

outside China, in Belt and Road development countries.

So we've been working, alongside many others,

with the Ministry of Environment,

to try and figure out how you stop all of those coal-fired power stations

in the pipeline.

And what is wonderful news is that, in September 2021,

President Xi Jinping, at the UN General Assembly,

announced that China would not fund or build

any more coal-fired power stations outside China.

(Applause)

We also have reason to believe -- and good reason, I think --

that China’s own emissions will hit their peaking plateau soon

and then will seriously decline before 2030.

Now, does more need to be done in China?

Certainly -- a lot more, and faster,

just like in every other country.

But what I've found heartening

are all of these changes to the system that they've been making in recent years.

All of these environment court judges,

the tens of thousands of cases,

many of them against government departments;

the Ministry of Environment getting enhanced powers;

the largest banks and financial institutions

realizing that coal is a bad investment;

the president promising no more coal outside China.

We work in many countries around the world,

but I have never seen the intense focus on systemic change

moving a country towards environmental improvements

as I've seen in China.

I'd like to think that I have given you reasons for hope.

China has certainly given me hope.

Thank you.

(Cheers and applause)