by Dr Myra Blyth
In June 2025 a ten-day workshop on climate change was jointly organised by researchers from Regents Park College and Peking University Law School. 20 participants comprising scholars and students from both universities gathered. A strong theme in this legal workshop was the role restorative justice can play in environmental disputes. Restorative justice experts Lawrence Kershen and Ivo Aertsen brilliantly facilitated two sessions on environmental restorative justice (ERJ) and evoked huge interest amongst the law students.
A student from China, Yijia Li, who at the time of the workshop was studying law in Oxford, attended the workshop and shared rich stories of how ERJ principles are finding expression in China. Here are two stories she told: the first demonstrates how environmental restorative justice has been applied in a rural, land-based conflict; the second shows how the principles are equally applicable in urban settings addressing issues of consumption, waste, and climate change.
Case Study: Datong Village [1]
The Huangshan Jiulong Peak Provincial Nature Reserve in Anhui Province is an area of immense ecological value, protecting a subtropical forest ecosystem and twenty-nine national first or second-class protected species. However, its core area borders Datong Village, and for decades, the relationship was fraught with conflict. In the 1980s and 90s, villagers from Datong frequently entered the reserve to illegally dig bamboo shoots, peel cassia bark, and cut trees. The conflict was so severe that villagers, armed with tools, had confrontations with the employees of Jiulong Peak. After the reserve was placed under new management in 2018, infrared cameras confirmed that local hunters and their dogs were still entering the core area to hunt. Instead of pursuing a purely punitive approach, the managing NGO, Green Anhui, initiated a restorative process. In 2019, they invited villagers from Datong to visit other successful community-managed conservation sites in Sichuan, which sparked their interest in conservation and sustainable use. This was followed by six months of intensive community surveys, interviews, and workshops to identify threats and key community figures.
This engagement culminated in a landmark shift. In 2020, the village officially established the Datong Village Conserved Area and signed a protection agreement with the reserve. Crucially, the village recruited its own residents—including former hunters—to form a six-person community patrol team. The team captain is a respected village elder with high prestige, ensuring community “buy-in.” This team now conducts daily patrols, successfully blocking dozens of threats like illegal fishing, harvesting, and hunting each year. The project also addressed the root cause of conflict—economic need—by helping the community establish an alternative livelihood: cultivating green plums, a crop the wild boar will not eat. The project’s remarkable transformation from violent conflict to collaborative conservation offers valuable insights when analysed through the prism of the attributes of environmental restorative justice.
Fundamentally healing oriented and direct participation: strong alignment.
The project’s greatest success is the healing of a decades-old, violent conflict. The shift from villagers fighting with reserve staff to becoming their partners in protection is a profound example of mending broken relationships. This was achieved through the direct participation of those who had caused and suffered harm. Villagers were not just consulted, they became the primary agents of protection, forming and leading their own patrol team. Furthermore, the sustainable livelihood project was proposed by the village secretary and patrol captain themselves, demonstrating bottom-up ownership.
Creation of dedicated spaces for dialogue and authentic listening: strong alignment.
The process began not with enforcement, but with dialogue. The initial study tours created a space for villagers to learn from peers, and the subsequent community surveys were a form of authentic listening to understand local needs and grievances. The project explicitly responded to the “hearty wish of the local people” for help in developing their livelihoods, proving that their voices were heard and valued.
Comprehensive identification of environmental harms and responsibility: strong alignment.
The project identified the clear harm of poaching and illegal harvesting. However, it also amplified the victims’ voices in a broader sense by recognising the harm to the villagers from crop damage by protected wildlife. This acknowledgement was critical. By addressing this, the project reframed responsibility from a one-sided blame on villagers to a shared responsibility to find solutions that protect both the ecosystem and community wellbeing.
Meaningful accountability and fostering deeper ecological understanding: strong alignment.
Accountability is evident in the patrol team’s tangible results: they conduct daily patrols, have patrolled over 20,000 kilometres, and have blocked over one-hundred and twenty seven instances of illegal hunting and harvesting. The commitment to deeper ecological understanding is shown by moving beyond simple enforcement to addressing systemic drivers. By connecting previously fragmented habitats through community conservation, the project has helped establish ecological corridors and expanded the total protected area from twenty seven to seventy two square kilometres. The green plum initiative demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of creating a harmonious human-nature interface where both can thrive.
Case Study: Xining, Qinghai [2]
While the Datong case illustrates environmental restorative justice in a rural, land-based conflict, the principles are equally applicable in urban settings addressing issues of consumption, waste, and climate change. A project in the eastern part of Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, demonstrates this. Located in a region with a fragile ecological environment, this community of fifteen thousand people faced challenges typical of rapid urbanisation, directly contributing to climate pressures. The harm in this urban context was not a violent clash but a systemic conflict between modern lifestyles and ecological limits. Key problems included a lack of proper systems for sorting and managing waste, seriously aging community facilities leading to excessive electricity and water consumption, and residential pollution of the adjacent Huangshui River. This was compounded by a social “passive mode,” where residents lacked awareness of clean energy and sustainable practices, and the single, top-down governance model was insufficient to address these complex issues.
The project in question, explicitly framed as a “Climate Change Mitigation” effort, initiated a multi-stakeholder, restorative process. Instead of imposing penalties, the approach focused on empowerment and collective action. It included creating environmental models by procuring community equipment for waste classification and energy-saving, opening knowledge courses and workshops to build resident capacity, and, crucially, establishing partnerships between the local government, the community, schools, and NGOs. The goal was to build a collaborative network to foster sustainable change from the ground up. This urban climate initiative offers valuable insights when analysed in relation to the attributes of environmental restorative justice, demonstrating how restorative elements can function in urban environmental governance. The Xining project’s design and outcomes show a strong alignment with the core attributes of environmental restorative justice in the context of urban climate action.
Fundamentally healing oriented and direct participation: moderate to strong alignment.
The project sought to heal the fractured relationship between urban residents and their environment. This was achieved through deep community engagement. By establishing a “community sustainable development demonstration base” and creating “community action workshops,” the project moved beyond passive education to active participation. It planned to create twenty “model households” and a “spontaneous environmental protection organization,” empowering residents to become leaders and agents of change rather than mere recipients of policy.
Creation of dedicated spaces for dialogue and authentic listening: strong alignment.
The project was built around creating platforms for dialogue. It planned four publicity seminars and developed “flexible residential courses and training systems” to foster learning and exchange. Most importantly, it aimed to “establish a dialogue with the government” by holding seminars on sustainable community policies. This creates a vital channel for community voices to be heard by decision-makers, turning monologue into a collaborative conversation.
Comprehensive identification of environmental harms and responsibility: strong alignment.
The project clearly identified interconnected harms: household waste, high energy consumption, and water pollution. It correctly framed responsibility as a shared issue. While acknowledging the role of residents’ “unreasonable lifestyle,” it also recognised systemic failures like “incomplete [waste] sorting facilities” and the lack of effective policies. The solutions, therefore, addressed both individual behaviour and systemic gaps, reflecting an holistic understanding of accountability.
Meaningful accountability and fostering deeper ecological understanding: strong alignment.
Accountability was designed into the project through the proposed “effective rewarding mechanism and restraint mechanism” and the goal of creating a “long-term bottom-up community sustainable development policy document.” This ensures that positive changes are reinforced and institutionalised. Deeper ecological understanding was a primary objective, with an anticipated result of reducing carbon emissions by 36.1 kg per person per day and fostering a “sustainable consumption concept” among residents. By focusing on education and creating new community norms, the project aimed for a lasting shift in ecological consciousness.
These stories told by Yijia Li can be found in a book entitled Restorative Justice in the UK and China: Encounters, Echoes, and Effects edited by Matthew Mills and Myra Blyth, to be released in July 2026.
[1] UNDP Small Grants Programme, “Project of Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use in Datong Village Community, Jiulongfeng Social Public Welfare Natural Reserve of Mount Huang,” https://www.sgp.undp.org/spacial-itemid-projects-landing-page/spacial-itemid-project-search-results/spacial-itemid-project-detailpage.html?view=projectdetail&id=34108.
[2] UNDP Small Grants Programme, “Sustainable Community Demonstration Project in East Xining, Qinghai Province,” https://www.sgp.undp.org/spacial-itemid-projects-landing-page/spacial-itemid-project-search-results/spacial-itemid-project-detailpage.html?view=projectdetail&id=29796.
If you are interested in exploring the use of restorative justice for environmental harms, please join us at our FREE online upcoming event ‘New approaches for responding to environmental harm’ being held on Wednesday 3 June 2026 from 12-1pm.
We will be sharing highlights from the recently published Restorative Justice Approaches for Environmental Harm Practice Guide from the EFRJ and looking at where and how Environmental Restorative Justice could be developed in the UK.