On Environmental Accountability Of Corporation

Modern environmental problem emerges along with the process of industrialization and modernization. Due to the striking individual department selfishness of the legislation of early corporation, it's merely viewed as an organization, through which the shareholder share the capital and profits as well, therefore pursuing the greatest profit for the shareholder gets to be the only objective of corporation.At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the continuous strengthening of corporation and that the negative effect of industry development upon society is increasingly exposed, society's attention upon corporation attains a higher level. The United States is the first country to research upon the social accountability of corporation, and as a conception, the social accountability of corporation was first advanced by Oliver Sheldon in 1924, from then on, people began discussing that corporation should bear certain common social accountability besides pursuing its greatest economic benefit.Since 1930s, because of the frequency emergence of environmental pollution, the environmental protection movement sprang up globally; society has put more attention upon the environmental accountability of corporation. It's urgent for the international society to take actions together to solve these problems.The United Nations hold the Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm of Sweden, 1972, and the Declaration of Human Environment was published, which put forward that the mankind should bear the responsibility and obligation of maintaining the nature, as well as exploiting and utilizing it. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development issued Our Common Future, which clearly gave the definition of sustainable development. In 1992, the UnitedNations Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil published The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Agenda 21. In January of 1999, at the World Economic Forum in Davost, Switzerland, Annan, the UN general secretary, advanced the UN Global Compact, which was officially started in the UN Headquarters in July, 2000. Environmental protection claim was included among the social accountability that the compact appealed corporation to observe. On December 12, 2001, the Social Accountability International, short for SAI, issued the lstrevised edition of SA8000, which concerns about the environmental protection accountability of corporation. The environmental protection accountability of corporation has aroused great attention among international society. Corporation, as the main body of the economic activity, starts to bring the environmental protection and environmental management into its management decision, seeking for the objective unanimity of self-development and the sustainable development of social economy.Today the developing pattern of recycle economy has been definitely put forward in China, thus the environmental accountability of corporation has been a new question urgent to study in the theoretical world. From the angle of environmental law, this dissertation takes research upon the environmental accountability of corporation. It includes 7 parts, and the main content is as follows:Part I By analyzing the study background and current situation of home and abroad about the environmental accountability of corporation, this dissertation elaborates the necessity and reasonability of its theoretical study.Part II Based on the history of global environmental protection movement and theory, it investigates the cause, historical evolution, and the theoretical basis of the environmental accountability of corporation. This part will be helpful to probe into the developing thread of the environmental accountability of corporation, and offer beneficial references for its research and practice.Part III Through combing the research achievement about the notion of the environmental accountability of corporation, in view of lack of a set of harmonious and monotonous conception frame in the theoretical world, and on the basis of clarification between moral responsibility and legal accountability, the definitecontext to discuss the environmental accountability has been delimited, which offers possibility of further research. The fundamental standpoint of this dissertation has been defined, that is, the environmental accountability of corporation is the legal obligation of the corporation, on the basis of which the necessity of clarifying the conception of the environmental accountability of corporation has been analyzed.Part IV This part puts more emphasis upon the extension of the environmental accountability of corporation. Without discussing the detailed classification of the environmental accountability of corporation in the traditional listing way, the dissertation analyses and discusses the extension from 3 levels, the decision, production and management process, and the environmental education of the corporation.Part V This part discusses the internalization of the environmental accountability of corporation and the environmental administration of the corporation. The effective enforcement of the environmental accountability of corporation can be realized only by internalizing its content as the administration mechanism of the corporation, i.e. the corporation should internalize the environmental accountability regulation as the interior administration pattern, thus the externalization of the corporation activity can meet the demand of environmental protection.Part VI In view of the foreign practice, it elaborates the system design about the realization of the environmental accountability of corporation, and discusses setting up relevant guarantee system, for that the sustainable development trace of the corporation can be embodied as well as the purpose of the corporation can be realized simultaneously.Part VII On the basis of the conclusion about the research upon the environmental accountability of corporation and the system design, in view of the development tendency of current recycle economy and the forthcoming implementation of the green GDP, it points out the direction of further research upon the environmental accountability of corporation.Outline of the research system of the dissertation: introduction — theory (cause and theoretical basis of the environmental accountability) — structure factors(conception classification and the extension analysis) —- countermeasure considerations (interaalization of the environmental accountability, administration pattern, and design of the guarantee system) —conclusion (tendency), which shows the unification of theory and reality, history and logic, process and structure, and today and future.