Editor's note: On March 12th, the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress voted to pass the Ecological Environment Code of the People's Republic of China. As the fundamental law in the field of ecological environment, the Ecological Environment Code has established a series of important concepts and principles in China's ecological environment field, stipulating a series of overarching, fundamental, and comprehensive legal system norms in the field of ecological environment. This is the second law in China named after the Civil Code, which signifies the beginning of the era of codification in ecological environment protection. On the occasion of the adoption of the Ecological Environment Code, our reporter interviewed experts and scholars to interpret the important provisions and their significance of the code for the benefit of readers. Yu Wenxuan, Vice Dean of the School of Civil and Commercial Economics and Law at China University of Political Science and Law, and Director of the Ecological and Resource Rule of Law Research Center: Systematically and comprehensively promoting biodiversity protection is a very important content in the Ecological Environment Code. Biodiversity is the sum of ecological complexes formed by organisms and the environment, as well as various ecological processes related to them. Protecting biodiversity helps to maintain our home planet and promote sustainable human development. Biodiversity includes three levels: ecosystem diversity, species diversity, and genetic diversity. Ecological degradation control, wildlife conservation, biosecurity, and prevention and control of invasive alien species all belong to the category of ecological diversity protection. China is one of the countries with the richest biodiversity in the world, but with rapid economic and social development, urbanization and other development and construction activities, as well as some unreasonable agricultural and forestry reclamation, it has destroyed the natural habitats of species, threatened their survival and reproduction, led to a decrease in species diversity, and disrupted the balance of ecosystems. At the same time, the spread of invasive alien species has become an important threat to China's biosafety field and has destroyed biodiversity. Alien species such as scavengers, snails, and American white moths, with their strong adaptability and reproductive abilities, have rapidly spread, not only directly threatening the survival of native organisms, but also greatly increasing the difficulty of ecosystem management. In the Ecological Environment Code, biodiversity protection is the main logical thread of ecological protection. It not only makes principled provisions in the General Provisions, explicitly requiring the strengthening of biodiversity protection, the establishment of a sound coordination mechanism for biodiversity protection work, and the establishment of a system for biodiversity investigation, monitoring, evaluation, and protection, but also reasonably layouts and constructs a spatial system for biodiversity protection. It is also reflected in regulations related to natural resource protection and sustainable utilization, protection of important geographical units, prevention and control of ecological degradation, and ecological restoration, especially in the management of nature reserves and ecological protection of the Yangtze River, Yellow River, Qinghai Tibet Plateau, Qinling Mountains, and other fields. At the same time, the Code also stipulates legal responsibilities and supplementary provisions for the destruction of biodiversity, thus forming a framework normative system for biodiversity conservation. For the protection of ecosystem diversity and species diversity, the Code extracts the protection principles from current laws and revises and updates them according to the practical needs of biodiversity conservation. For example, in terms of species protection, the Ecological Environment Code integrates relevant content from the current Wildlife Protection Law, as well as regulations and rules on the protection of wild plants and the prevention of invasive alien species. It focuses on making provisions for graded management, habitat protection, ex situ and in situ protection, release management, and pest response. Due to the fact that genetic resources are derived from and dependent on species, and the legal practice of genetic resource protection is still developing, this part of the content is included in the species protection chapter. By compiling and editing relevant content from existing laws, regulations, and administrative rules, the Ecological Environment Code has systematized the relevant legal provisions and added new provisions according to the needs of biodiversity conservation. This has solved the previous situation of "going it alone" in relevant legislation, filled the legal gap, and enhanced the systematicity and authority of biodiversity legal norms, providing a more systematic and comprehensive legal basis for biodiversity conservation. Next, it is necessary to further strengthen the implementation of legislative work, build a more operable legal regulatory system under the guidance of the code and supported by special regulations, and provide a more solid legal foundation for biodiversity conservation. Zhang Zhongmin, Vice Dean and Professor of Hubei University of Economics: Improving the quality and efficiency of cross regional ecological environment governance. Ecological environment has natural integrity and fluidity, and watershed water bodies, atmospheric circulation, and ecosystems are not restricted by administrative boundaries. This means that once there are problems such as pollution and damage to the ecological environment, the traditional territorial management model is difficult to effectively respond. For example, the Wanfeng Lake Basin was once plagued by the unclear rights and responsibilities of the three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi, and the long-term difficulty in eradicating illegal aquaculture pollution, leading to governance difficulties and highlighting the necessity and urgency of cross regional ecological governance. Currently, there are over 30 effective laws in the field of ecological environment, more than 100 administrative regulations, over 1000 local regulations, as well as many related judicial interpretations, rules and regulations, which suffer from duplication and lack of coordination. In response to issues such as cross regional pollution, insufficient coordination, ambiguous rights and responsibilities, and inconsistent judicial rulings, various regions are actively exploring innovative models such as joint law enforcement, judicial cooperation, and cross regional court jurisdiction. However, due to the lack of unified legal support, it is difficult to form a long-term mechanism. How to solve the problem of cross regional ecological governance? As the second law in China named after a code, the Ecological Environment Code has made a series of institutional innovations through systematic institutional design, providing effective basis for solving the above-mentioned problems. According to the integrity of the ecosystem, define rights and responsibilities, establish the principle of integrated protection and systematic governance of mountains, waters, forests, fields, lakes, grasses, and sands, break down regional barriers from the top-level design, and provide basic guidelines for cross regional governance. In the past, there was a problem of "each managing a section" in the ecological governance of the Yangtze River Basin in different regions. The responsible parties for upstream and downstream, left and right banks were not unified, the governance concepts were different, and the governance policies were difficult to coordinate. Often, they acted independently and had difficulty taking unified actions, which led to the difficulty in improving the quality and efficiency of ecological governance in the Yangtze River Basin. To this end, the Ecological Environment Code sets special regulations for key watersheds and important ecological units, clarifies the requirements for integrated protection of key regions such as the Yangtze River and Yellow River, and establishes a collaborative mechanism. This is conducive to integrating the regulatory rights and responsibilities of the entire basin, providing unified compliance for the ten-year fishing ban and pollution control measures in the Yangtze River. The vitality of law lies in its implementation. Only by clarifying rights and responsibilities can the system be effectively implemented. Vertically, the Ecological Environment Code establishes a vertical power and responsibility system for central and local ecological environment authorities, clarifying the division of responsibilities among various levels of government; Horizontally, the Code specifies the establishment and improvement of a coordinated mechanism for the joint protection of ecological environment in key areas, watersheds, and sea areas across administrative regions, implementing unified planning, standards, monitoring, and protection measures. This means elevating collaborative governance to a legal obligation. To make the legal system, as a 'weapon', play its due role, it is necessary to enhance the rigidity of the system, which is also the key to ensuring its implementation. The Ecological Environment Code strengthens responsibility constraints to achieve institutional "long teeth" and "electrification", stipulating that the state implements a responsibility system and assessment system for ecological environment protection goals, and includes the completion of ecological environment protection goals in the assessment and evaluation content. At the same time, it is clarified that important ecological and environmental problems and their dereliction of duty discovered during ecological and environmental protection inspections and rectification shall be held accountable in accordance with national regulations. Once the authority and responsibilities are clearly defined, the implementation of the system will naturally follow. It should be noted that cross regional ecological environment governance is not only a systematic project, but also a legal project. The Ecological Environment Code integrates scattered rules through systematic legislation, solves practical problems through institutionalized design, and elevates cross regional governance from local exploration to national legal protection. In the future, with the implementation of the Ecological Environment Code, cross regional ecological governance will become more collaborative and efficient, truly realizing the protection of green mountains and rivers by the power of the rule of law. Xu Xianying, former director of Gansu Provincial Institute of Desertification Control: Building the Great Wall of Rule of Law for Desertification Prevention and Control China is one of the countries with the largest desertification area, the largest affected population, and the most severe sandstorm hazards in the world. For a long time, China has regarded desertification prevention and control as the main task of desertification control, striving to improve the ecology of sand areas and build a solid ecological security barrier. Especially since entering the new era, China's desertification prevention and control system has become more perfect, scientific desertification control capabilities have continuously improved, and the level of census and monitoring has continued to improve. Through the implementation of a number of key ecological governance projects, the ecological situation in the desert areas has significantly improved, and the economic and social development of the desert areas has steadily developed. A desertification prevention and control path that combines ecological protection and restoration with people's livelihood improvement has been explored. Chapter 6 of the third part of the Ecological Environment Code, entitled "Prevention and Control of Ecological Degradation", integrates relevant provisions of the Soil and Water Conservation Law and the Sand Prevention and Control Law, and is divided into two sections: soil and water conservation and sand prevention and control. Among them, in terms of sand prevention and control, it is required to strengthen the comprehensive prevention and control of desertification, strictly manage the activities in the areas where desertified land is located, and establish a system of sealing and protecting desertified land. If the law is established, green mountains will always be there, and if the system is established, green waters will flow endlessly. The promulgation of the Code will further improve the ecological civilization legal system, build a systematic, standardized, and authoritative legal "Great Wall" for the construction of a beautiful China where humans and nature coexist harmoniously, and lay a solid foundation for the rule of law to safeguard our common homeland and achieve sustainable development of the Chinese nation. Since I started working in 1985, I have been fighting at the forefront of sand prevention, control, and utilization, using the wings of technology to block the invasion of sandstorms. When I was young, accompanied by sand, I followed my parents countless times to plant windwalls, protect Chai Wan, and crush sand barriers in the sand. The seeds of my dream of controlling sand were buried deep in my heart. When I was in college, I studied desertification control. After graduating from college, I returned to my hometown and joined the Gansu Provincial Desertification Control Research Institute, which was still in Wuwei at the time, to work on desertification control until retirement. In the early stage of sand control, the "person pulling and shoulder carrying" sand compaction mode was commonly used. It was difficult to excavate trenches for sand compaction in sandy areas, which was labor-intensive and difficult to ensure efficiency. I led a team to independently develop sand control equipment and produced the first batch of small hand-held sand barrier machines and rapid seedling planting devices for shrubs in sandy areas. This solved the "bottleneck" problem of difficulty in opening pits for sand control afforestation and high labor intensity in sand compaction, greatly improving the planting speed and seedling survival rate of sand growing shrubs. Now, my team and I have successfully developed a micro grass laying and sand pressing machine with independent intellectual property rights, which has been updated to the fifth generation. Preventing and controlling desertification requires not only technology, but also systems and the rule of law. The achievements of our national defense sand control work cannot be separated from continuously improving top-level design, more scientific governance concepts, more sound work mechanisms, and stronger policy support. The Ecological Environment Code fixes the rich practical experience in sand prevention and control work in legal form, with content based on the present and considering the long term, reflecting the dialectical unity of high-quality development and high-level protection. It provides a "rule of law navigation" for sand prevention and control work in the new era, making the advantages of "China's governance" not only visible, but also tangible and effective, which is conducive to better transforming institutional advantages into development advantages and injecting new momentum into the development of sand areas. Nowadays, the desertification control industry is facing new opportunities, and "green mountains and clear waters are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver" has become a consensus in the whole society, ushering in a new spring for desertification prevention and control. As sand control professionals born in Shawo Wo, we must study and promote the Ecological Environment Code, adhere to the combination of sand control and wealth creation, achieve ecological improvement and economic development that complement each other, and make respecting, learning, abiding by, and using the law a common action of the whole society, gathering greater strength and jointly creating a new era of sand sea