Challenges, Opportunities and Future Paths: Environmental Governance of Big Data Initiatives in China

Abstract

Environmental governance is a common task confronting human society in the 21st century. In recent years, China’s environmental crisis has been alleviated to some extent by the Chinese government’s vigorous regulation. However, as the world factory, China’s total greenhouse gas emissions have ranked first in the world for many years, and China still faces a very huge environmental protection pressure. The degree of informationization of China’s environmental governance must be improved, with particular emphasis on the collection and use of environmental big data to help transform, upgrade, and improve the efficiency of China’s environmental governance. The Chinese government obviously recognizes this and keeps promulgating policy documents related to environmental big data, and there are certain achievements in practice, but it is still in the primary stage of figuring out in general with many imperfections existing. The United States and other countries have more mature experience in the collection and application of environmental big data, which can be an important reference for China. Establishing organizational structures to support the development of environmental big data, striving to form a team of professionals with interdisciplinary knowledge, strengthening relevant legislation for environmental big data, and utilizing international environmental cooperation mechanisms to conduct international cooperation on environmental big data are the areas that China needs to focus on most in the process of improving the collection and use of environmental big data in the future.