Beyond Compliance: Procedural Legitimacy, Carbon Information Governance, and China's Response to the EU CBAM

Abstract

Legal debate over the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) has concentrated on World Trade Organization compatibility, carbon leakage, and climate ambition. This article argues that a central difficulty lies in the administration of evidence. CBAM relies on methods for calculating embedded emissions, verification, default values, an adjustment reflecting free allocation under the EU Emissions Trading System, and proof of carbon prices effectively paid abroad. Formal duties fall on authorised EU declarants, while much of the underlying evidence is generated by foreign installations and upstream suppliers. The measure's legal defensibility therefore depends not only on formal alignment with the EU Emissions Trading System, but also on whether the methodology is accessible, verified actual data can displace defaults, evidence of a qualifying foreign carbon price receives reasoned consideration through the declarant's procedure, and errors can be corrected before liability is fixed. World Trade Organization jurisprudence under Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade provides the principal legal basis for this claim. Transboundary environmental impact assessment is not directly applicable to a trade regulation, but its sequence of prior assessment, participation, consideration of alternatives, and continuing review offers a limited procedural analogy for evaluating external regulatory burdens. The article then distinguishes two elements of China's response. Carbon information governance is the direct interface with CBAM because it determines product-level emissions, verification, and proof of carbon prices paid. The Ecological Conservation Redline has a complementary role in ecological spatial and biodiversity governance; it neither establishes embedded emissions nor reduces CBAM liability. Keeping those functions separate allows China to challenge specific assumptions with traceable evidence and clarifies the procedural conditions under which the European Union can defend CBAM against claims of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination.