Research On The Legal Mechanism Of Public Participation In Environmental Protection

The relationship between mankind and the environment is a both old and new subject. After fighting against nature for thousands years, human beings have developed themselves, change the nature and imprinted with their activities all the areas where they have been. However, as a result, today's environment is no longer the one of the ancient times. Human beings have changed it and it has paid them back. Ecological deterioration, depletion of natural resources and environmental pollution have become the new issues people encounter in the process of development. Although the government of our country has been advocating preserving the environment for several decades, the problems about the pollution of the environment and the damage of the ecology haven't been solved yet. They are getting worse and worse instead. Thus the social contradiction resulted from those problems become more and more intense. One of the deep-seated reasons is the lower degree to which the public involves in the environmental preservation. If we want to extricate the environment preservation from the present predicament, several absolutely essential actions that we must take are to improve democratic degree in that field, to broaden the scope and the channels of the public participation. But this will not be carried out successfully if there isn't any effective law involved. Therefore it is urgent and essential for our country to set up a legal system of Public Participation of the Environment Preservation (PPEP for short below).Besides the introduction, the thesis consists of the following five parts:The first chapter is the summary of the public participation, including its definition and background analysis. And on the basis of this we got the meaning of public participation in environmental protection and the need.The second chapter is about the bases of PPEP. When discussing its theoretical basis, the basis of jurisprudence of PPEP and the theoretical basis of the law of environment preservation are also researched. The theories of public participation in law of environment preservation include the theory of environment public property, the theory of environment public entrusting and that of citizen's environment right.In the third part, foreign legal systems about PPEP and involved experience are described. After researching, I maintain that environment-preserving campaign in foreign countries was launched because of the strong public opinion. Many foreign governments have been attaching great importance to the public's participating in environmental preservation, and now they have established their respective legal systems that are comparatively perfect. Based on that, the experience that we can use for reference has been summed up in this thesis.The contents of the fourth part are composed of the following two parts: China's present situation of the legal system of PPEP and various proposals for making the system perfect. From the relevant regulations I learn that in China, the legal system of PPEP has had its own embryonic form and has been developing forward, but it is still not that perfect as we expect.The last part is for public participation in environmental protection in China the legal mechanisms for the existing problems, from the establishment of environmental information disclosure system, the public hearing system, environmental issues and other aspects petition system to improve China's legal mechanisms for public participation in environmental protection concept.