On Legal Problems Concerning Public Participation In Environmental Preservation

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). For now, though we have had the embryonic form of the legal system, we find that it still has hosts of shortcomings that are disadvantageous in guiding and attracting the public to preserve the environment. In view of these serious problems mentioned above, the main purpose of my writing this thesis is to put forward some legislative proposals and countermeasures for our legal system of PPEP. Besides the introduction, the thesis consists of the following four parts: The first chapter is the summary of the public participation in environmental preservation, including its definition and great significance. Based on the opinions of other scholars, the definition is collated and stipulated in two respects: the subject and the scope. Meanwhile, its mechanism and content are specified here. As for the significance of PPEP, I believe that the public's participating is very helpful both in avoiding the government and market failure in improving the efficiency of the environmental administration. What's more, it is indispensable for our conforming to the international trend in environmental preservation. The second chapter is about the bases of PPEP, including social basis and theoretical basis. I am sure that its social basis lies in the spring-up of environment-preserving associations and the transformation of the government's function. 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 last 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. Considering the existing problems we are facing, some proposals are put forward here for perfecting our legal system of PPEP, including the specification and institutionalization of the citizen's environment right, the improvement of be-informed system and the relief system.