China’s Qinling Ecological Ruling: A Wake-Up Call for Pakistan to Enforce Environmental Laws and Uphold the Public Trust Doctrine

Between 2024 and 2025, commercial tourism operators organised unauthorised hiking and mountain-crossing expeditions into ecologically sensitive areas of China's Qinling Mountains. According to a subsequent official Chinese judicial summary, nine companies and an individual were associated with 1,292 organised trips involving approximately 6,775 tourist visits.
These activities disturbed vegetation, damaged soil, threatened wildlife habitats, and placed additional pressure on an already fragile mountain ecosystem.
Chinese prosecutors initiated environmental public interest litigation against the organisers. The courts ordered the cessation of prohibited activities and imposed ecological restoration liabilities. The proceedings demonstrated that environmental responsibility extends beyond conventional industrial pollution to commercial activities that collectively degrade biodiversity and ecosystem services.
For Pakistan, where protected forests, national parks, wetlands, and mountainous ecosystems face competing pressures from tourism, commercial development, and resource exploitation, the Chinese experience raises an important question: Are environmental laws merely regulatory commitments, or are they enforceable obligations capable of preventing and repairing ecological destruction?

The Public Trust Doctrine: Nature as a Public Responsibility
The Qinling litigation provides a useful comparative example of the values underlying the Public Trust Doctrine, although the Chinese decisions were based on China's own environmental legislation and public interest litigation framework rather than expressly applying that doctrine.
Under the Public Trust Doctrine, certain natural resources are regarded as being held by the state in trust for the public. Government authorities therefore have responsibilities to protect these resources against unlawful exploitation and ecological degradation.
This concept challenges the assumption that public ownership permits unrestricted commercial use. Instead, governmental authority over forests, rivers, mountains, and protected landscapes should be exercised consistently with long-term public interests.
Applied to Pakistan, the doctrine provides an important framework for examining how public institutions manage ecologically sensitive resources. Government agencies should not merely issue permissions, collect fees, or regulate commercial activity; they should ensure that decisions preserve ecological integrity.
The Qinling case reinforces the practical significance of this approach. Commercial operators cannot escape responsibility simply because their activities resemble ordinary tourism. Where organised operations unlawfully damage protected ecosystems, environmental accountability must follow.

Pakistan’s Constitutional Recognition of Environmental Rights:
Pakistan already possesses a significant constitutional foundation for stronger environmental protection.
The Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendment of 2024 introduced Article 9A, expressly recognising every person's right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
This constitutional development strengthens the legal basis for environmental protection and provides an opportunity to reconsider how environmental rights are implemented through administrative and judicial institutions.
Even before Article 9A, Pakistani courts had recognised environmental protection as an essential component of fundamental rights.
In General Secretary, West Pakistan Salt Miners Labour Union v. Director, Industries and Mineral Development (1994), the Supreme Court recognised access to uncontaminated water as an aspect of the constitutional right to life.
Similarly, in D.G. Khan Cement Company Ltd. v. Government of Punjab (2021), the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on cement development in environmentally vulnerable areas, emphasising precaution, ecological protection, and intergenerational justice.
These decisions establish a strong jurisprudential foundation. However, constitutional recognition and judicial principles must be accompanied by consistent enforcement if they are to produce measurable environmental improvements.

Pakistan’s Enforcement Challenge:
Pakistan's central difficulty is not necessarily the absence of environmental legislation. Rather, the challenge lies in translating existing legal duties into effective, coordinated, and verifiable environmental protection.
The Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, 1997, and corresponding provincial environmental legislation provide mechanisms for regulating environmentally harmful activities, issuing protection orders, and imposing penalties.
Section 16 of the Federal Act, within its applicable jurisdiction, permits environmental protection authorities to require measures that prevent or remedy harmful activities, including environmental restoration. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of such provisions depends on institutional capacity, credible monitoring, scientific evidence, and timely enforcement.
Environmental governance becomes particularly challenging when responsibility is divided among environmental protection agencies, wildlife departments, forest authorities, development agencies, and local administrations. Without effective coordination, environmental violations may continue despite the existence of formal legal safeguards.
The Qinling litigation demonstrates the value of identifying responsible operators, establishing the relationship between commercial activities and ecological damage, and pursuing enforceable restoration measures.
Pakistan could strengthen its enforcement framework by adopting similarly evidence-based approaches rather than relying primarily on administrative warnings or financial penalties.

The Margalla Hills: A Direct Pakistani Parallel
The controversy surrounding commercial activities within Islamabad's Margalla Hills National Park provides a particularly relevant comparison.
In 2024, Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered the removal of restaurants operating unlawfully within the protected national park and reaffirmed the legal importance of conserving its ecological character.
The litigation demonstrated that commercial interests and administrative arrangements cannot automatically override statutory protections governing national parks. Both the Margalla Hills and Qinling disputes concern commercial activities conducted within protected mountain environments. However, the Chinese proceedings offer an additional policy lesson through their emphasis on assessing ecological injury and recovering restoration costs from responsible operators.
Pakistan should therefore consider whether enforcement proceedings adequately address not only the termination of unlawful activities but also the restoration of damaged habitats, recovery of environmental losses, and monitoring of ecological rehabilitation. Closing an unlawful establishment or terminating a prohibited activity may stop further damage, but it does not necessarily repair the environmental harm already caused.

Strengthening Environmental Enforcement in Pakistan:
The Qinling experience suggests several practical directions for reform.
First, environmental protection agencies and protected-area authorities should strengthen monitoring of commercial operations in ecologically sensitive areas, including unauthorised tourism, construction, land clearing, and resource extraction.
Second, ecological harm should be documented through credible scientific assessments, including geospatial evidence, biodiversity surveys, and habitat monitoring.
Third, environmental authorities should pursue timely enforcement measures and, where legally available, require responsible operators to fund restoration.
Fourth, environmental litigation should increasingly examine cumulative ecological damage rather than treating each individual activity as environmentally insignificant.
Finally, coordination among regulatory agencies, prosecutors, courts, and environmental experts should be strengthened within Pakistan's constitutional and statutory framework.
These proposals do not require Pakistan to reproduce China's legal system. Rather, they involve adapting effective enforcement practices to Pakistan's existing constitutional guarantees, administrative institutions, and principles of environmental justice.

Conclusion: Making Environmental Rights Enforceable
The Qinling Mountains litigation demonstrates that ecological protection becomes meaningful when legal prohibitions are supported by investigation, judicial intervention, financial accountability, and environmental restoration.
For Pakistan, the significance of this experience extends beyond tourism management. It concerns the broader obligation of public institutions to protect natural resources for current and future generations.
Article 9A provides a constitutional foundation, while the Public Trust Doctrine offers a compelling framework for understanding the state's environmental responsibilities.
The next challenge is implementation.
Pakistan must move beyond treating environmental protection as a matter of policy declarations and occasional enforcement campaigns. Ecological conservation requires continuous monitoring, institutional accountability, effective remedies, and scientifically verified restoration.

The central lesson from Qinling is clear: environmental law protects the public interest only when ecological violations produce enforceable consequences and when restoration becomes a legal responsibility rather than an optional commitment.