Coordination of Interests between National Park Protection and Hydropower Development

How to properly resolve the conflict of interests between national park protection and small hydropower projects is a serious issue that must be taken seriously in promoting the construction of ecological civilization and the rule of law. In practice, it happens often that local government sacrifices the resources and energy rights of local community residents for the sake of constructing national parks, at the expense of local power supply safety and energy structure. Therefore, it is necessary to re-examine the connotation and extension of environmental public interests, clarify the various public interests that may be involved in the construction and management of national parks, uphold environmental justice, and properly handle the contradictions and conflicts between hydropower energy interests, environmental public interests, and private rights. The Opinions on Further Improving the Classification and Rectification of Small Hydropower Projects have made useful explorations and proposed a categorized rectification opinion of "exit, rectification, and retention" based on the principle of classification and implementation, which is highly inspiring. We suggest that the National Park Law, which is currently being formulated, draw on this approach, be guided by Xi Jinping's thought of ecological civilization, introduce a mechanism for balancing interests, establish basic principles such as prioritizing high-level interests, proportionality, maximizing overall interests, and tilted protection, strengthen the construction of energy justice system, improve procedural justice guarantee measures, and coordinate the promotion of ecological protection, green development, and people's livelihood improvement, so as to achieve "the common development of life, production and environment".