Trading Schemes

This chapter examines market mechanisms as a regulatory concept in environmental law. Such mechanisms are employed to respond to a variety of environmental problems and they encompass a broad range of specific regulatory strategies. Yet their application is often assumed to yield universal outcomes and to take similar legal forms across jurisdictions. Focusing on the EU emissions trading scheme and the China pilot trading schemes as case studies, this chapter challenges this view, and makes an appeal for better use of comparative environmental law methodology in studying market mechanisms and their legal specificities.