On Stipulating Environmental Right In Constitution

As a newly-developed right, environmental right is the basic right for subjects of environmental legal relationship to enjoy a suitable, healthy and fine living environment, making rational use of environmental resources. Of which, the criteria of healthy and fine living environment can be measured by environmental quality standard and emission standard for pollutants; the rational use of environmental resources can be controlled through inspection on the applications for licenses and the environmental impact assessments, and the legal protecting scope of environmental right is defined as following: all the subjects of environmental legal relationship enjoy the right to live in a environment not polluted and destroyed, and make use of environmental resources in some extent. It arises with the modern environmental crisis.~2Some relevant issues on the necessity of stipulating environmental right in our constitution are discussed in this paper.In the first part, background of the development of environmental right is introduced.With the globalization of constitution and interaction of different countries' constitutions, the constitutional stipulations about right, including the establishment of environmental right in some countries, are more and more extended. Given that we are now carrying out our constitutional construction, it's necessary for us to supplement clauses about environmental right in constitution as soon as possible to keep up with other countries.The second part discusses the concept, nature, characteristics and classification of environmental rights through introducing some scholar's theories and views. Making classification of environmental the main content, this part confirms citizen's environmental right, national environmental right, human environmental right, and environmental right of legal persons and other corporations; denies natural objective right. Among all kinds of environmental rights, citizen's environmental right should be in the center, and be primarily considered while stipulating environmental right in constitution. The third part mainly discusses the necessity of stipulating environmental right in constitution.First of all, the environmental problems of the world and our country are increasingly serious, and there have been all kinds of damages in real life to threaten human existence.Secondly, it's the requirement of environmental era to stipulate environmental right in constitution. Rio Declaration introduced citizen's right to know environment and participate in it, emphasizing the importance of citizen's environmental right repeatedly.Thirdly, with the increase of environmental torts, the subjects, whose rights are invaded, need a base for right remedy, and the remedy should be on constitutional position.Fourthly, this paper emphasizes the necessity to stipulate environmental right in constitution from the view of constitutional functions. Given the two important functions of constitution - protect and limit (control) power, the stipulation of environmental right in constitution will arouse cautions of the government when it try to ensure citizen's economic right while neglecting environmental protect. At the same time, the stipulation can make up the defects of original environmental principles in constitution, which were deficient in embodying the difference of various subjects in environmental rights and environmental obligations.Finally, stipulation of environmental right in constitution also attributes to the establishment of sustainable development goal in our country.The fourth part discusses the design of stipulating environmental right in our constitution from three aspects.First of all, three ways of environmental right design in foreign constitutions, i.e., the ways based on symmetry of citizen's environmental rights and obligations, correspondence of citizen's rights and national obligations, and combination of citizen's environmental obligations and national environmental obligations, are introducedThen, it deduces that our design of stipulating environmental right in constitution should use the third way mentioned above for reference.It is necessary to emphasize once more that the rights and obligations of all the environmental right subjects supplemented in our constitution should be in the three chapters respectively- Citizen's Basic Rights and Obligations, Economic System, National System; different subjects have differentiated rights and obligations.Author's view is put forward in the part of conclusion after summarizing this paper. To the author's point, what we should do at present is to stipulate environmental right in constitution as soon as possible; it's primary to settle the constitutional position of environmental right, and then solve the problems, such as the content of environmental right, ways to carry out environmental right remedy in procedure and practice. The stipulation of environmental right in constitution is to draw attention of all the society, especially to restrain performances of the government in blindly developing economy without regard to environmental protect; stress the nation's primary position in environmental obligation system, protecting environment and natural resources, human beings and our descendants.