Abstract: Discourse plays an important role in the fields of politics，economy and social life as many activities are realized by discourse.Environmental discourse makes its appearance with more attention given to environmental problems and it has aroused the interests of multiple disciplines.The paper tends to review the related research on environmental discourse in western countries over 40 years，including the definitions of environmental discourse，its genres，its research methods，its research fields and important publications，hoping to help Chinese scholars understand better environmental discourse and environmental communication.