Abstract
The environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure has become a widely applicable tool for environmental decision-making in the world since the seventies, ensuring consideration of environmental concerns within planning, before decisions are taken. This chapter offers an overview of principles, legal instruments, mechanisms and guidelines promoting public participation in EIA in China. It analyses the Chinese legal frameworks and practices, by highlighting the weaknesses of this legal system. However, successful public participation depends on more than just granting a right to participate and setting out a procedure in a legislative act. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the practical issues and lessons learned and sets out practices in public participation exercises at the national and the local level. To this extent the provinces of Shandong and Yunnan have been selected as case studies. In the concluding section, the chapter sets out some recommendations to improve public participation in China.