Research On Public Participation In Environmental Administration With Chinese Characteristics

People's material and cultural life is being improved; at the same time, the environment is being seriously damaged with the rapid development of the economy and society. The trends of environmental protection all over the world are gathering strength with the environment crisis becoming ever more acute. The experience of other countries we gained over the years shows that public participation greatly promotes the development of the environmental protection industry and wins more and more widespread recognition in China and abroad as people taking part in environmental administration become one of the standards of environmental law. Many achievements have been obtained in the theory and practice in terms of the scope, form, process, means of participation and legal support. As a developing nation, the Chinese people's environmental awareness is gradually being enhanced, the democratic ideology of management and participation in the administration and discussion of state affairs is advancing with the times, public participation is both adapting itself to the trends of the world and meeting the needs of the masses.It is one of the importance strengths that public participation pushes the sustainable development of the environmental protection because this action is a kind of bottom-up strength, a sort of sustainable strength, further, a large scale constructive weapon that is capable of preventing actions of environment destruction. Because any environmental protection problem will influence the interests of some particular people or many common people, they will take part in environmental protection activities to protect their interests, at the same time, the interests of the entire society will also be improved. To promote the environmental protection cause, their environmental consciousness should be greatly enhanced through enhancing people's qualities and mortal. But it is more important that the mechanism of information releasing and public interest expression to be improved, hence introducing effective public participation to provide a strong sustainable strength for environmental protection.Effective public participation depends on a series of idiographic practicable rules. Firstly, environmental information should be published fully and timely. Secondly, the mechanism of expert verification and consultation should be perfected. Finally, public participation of environmental protection should be based on the orderly organization of interests.In the light of the above analysis, the dissertation presents some advice and ideas suitable for the public participation with Chinese characteristics on the basis of analyzing problems regarding environmental administration at home and abroad.The first part of the dissertation introduces the origin of public participation through the following aspects: the cause of environmental problems, the background of public participation in the environmental administration, the change of government roles and the idea of environmental administration, the development of Non-government Organizations (NGOs) and the importance of public participation in environmental administration. In addition, a model is presented for reducing the cost through public participation, further illustrating the role of public participation on the basis of analyzing the relationships among the related factors.The second part of this dissertation analyses the theory and mechanism of public participation in environmental administration, at the same time, discusses the practice according to the situation of our country, the form and development of the public's environmental consciousness, the approaches and foundation, theories and implementation mechanism of public participation in environmental administration, as well as its law value, and the role of NGOs in particular.The third part of the dissertation elucidates that there are many differences in the public's participation consciousness and degree between China and advanced nations by summarizing the birth development of public participation in environmental management and the main participation mechanism. It is discovered that the reason behind this is that there are a great many differences in environmental education between China and other countries besides national conditions and culture et. al.In the fourth part, through the test of practice, the dissertation make an analysis of the public participation in environmental administration by describing three projects, i.e. the Wetland of Hengshui Lake and Natural Bird Reserve, the reclamation of land from the sea by Shandong Mingliu Shiye Group Corporation limited Science and Technology Garden and Dongying Huanghe Estuary Marine Clam Reserve. From the first two projects, we can find that people are willing to take part in this activity if they have opportunities. From the third project, we find that different people have different attitudes due to different interests. But we must admit that it is the existence of these issues that makes it necessary to improve public participation of environmental administration.In the fifth part, we put forward some suggestions on how to guarantee that the NGOs plays a very important role, purposes a model for public participation based on the trinity of government, firm and public, and a model of administration with public participation during the entire process in a periodic manner by comparing the conditions of home and abroad to perfect the mechanism of public participation in environmental administration. To conclude, the dissertation presents a number of existing unresolved problems ideas concerning future work.The significances of this dissertation can be summarized as follows. First, it is of profound theoretical significances. Under the guidance of the scientific concept of development and the people foremost, development is always the topic in an environmental-friendly society. However, economic development and the environmental protection always contradict each other. For the object that economic development should be coordinated with environmental protection, it needs more active public participation besides the endeavors of government and enterprises. In many developed countries, a great deal has been achieved in public participation in environmental administration, while we are lagging behind. So research in this field should be reinforced, which is important for building an environmental-friendly society. Second, this dissertation reports considerable practice and applications, such as the demonstration project of wetland and bird reserve in Hengshui Lake, the project of reclaiming land from the sea of the Shandong Mingliu Ltd. and the natural reserve area of the shellfish Meretrix meretrix in the Yellow River, Estuary all show that active public participation is crucial for the projects and the environmental protection. Third, this dissertation has some innovations. Because of the special national and historical conditions of our country, especially the long time existence of planned economy, it seems strange and difficult for the public to participate in environmental administration and environmental protection. However, public participation will become more and more common with the development of economy and the gradual awakening of people's consciousness of environmental protection. There are more and more instances about public participation in China, i.e. the impermeable membrane event of Yuanmingyuan Garden in 2006.In a word, this dissertation mainly deals with the public participation in environmental administration in the process of establishing the socialist market economic system in China. This study is a result of careful consideration of the historical factors and the actuality in China, including abundant instances. And this study may be of value and provide for government environmental administration.