China’s Environmental Governance and Law Development Review Based on Co-Word Analysis

Abstract

The research and development situation of environmental governance in the past thirty years may be intuitively acquired with the co-word analysis in the interdisciplinary environmental law. This paper analyzes the research focus and transformation situation of China’s environment governance and law by searching related papers with the subject words “environmental law” in Chinese Journal Full-text Database. The co-word analysis results show environmental law research showed five main knowledge focuses, such as international environmental law, sustainable development, environmental right, participation, and environment conservation. And according to the co-word analysis, environmental law research may be divided into four stages: foundation, prosperity, from theory to practice transformation, and challenge stage of environmental law response to new environment problems. By analysis of the research focus, we can know China’s researchers in the environmental governance policy or law should strengthen the scientific, pertinence and prospective characteristics of environmental law research, make interdisciplinary and comprehensive study combined with China long-term science and technology development.