A Study On Environmental Protection Function Of Property Right

In dealing with environmental problems, our government has been used to make use of directive control methods and neglects using the private legal approach to deal with environmental problems, which results in so serious deficient of relative private legal rules in dealing with environmental problems that they can't meet the actual need, imposing further obstacles & high cost with poor efficiency in executing environmental law. The environmental quality has never been radically bettered. It renders an objective requirement in using private legal mechanism including property right system to deal with environmental problems.This essay first makes analysis on reasons of generating environmental problems and points out that no property right or unclear property right is an important reason resulting in environmental problems. Then it discuses the theoretical and practical basis for environmental protection function of the property right. The theoretical basis is the general function of the property right such as political, economical and social functions. Whereas the actual basis is that it is not only the demands of market economy & good governance, but also the requirements of current environmental legislation and public participation. The essay makes an emphasized study on how the property right takes environmental protection function in terms of pollution prevention law and natural resources law from a view point of positivism. In the field of pollution prevention, it gives several system examples such as discharge right trade, remedy of environmental tort, etc. As to natural resources, it discusses the cases such as resolution to tragedy of commons, application of quasi-right and shift of forest property, etc. In the end, through the comparison between property right system and control approach as well as the other approaches it makes analysis on the value & limitation of property right system in solving environmental problems, which believes that to solve environmental problems, it requires many kinds of legal mechanisms as well as a combination of law and the other methods.As a logical extension, the essay makes a brief introduction of dialectical relationbetween property right & environmental protection, which analyzes the respective reasonability & its mutual harmony from a view point of interest.