Research On The Legislation On Compensation For Environmental Damage In China

The survival and development of human beings is closely related to the environment, and they can produce a mutual influence on each other. And the unrestrained activity of human beings often causes a variety of environmental problems, which exist at all times and in all countries. In the rapid development of society and economy, we often ignore the protection of environment, which inevitably leads to an increase threat of environmental degradation. And environmental problem in return has become the major challenge to the development of our society. Environmental problem is sure to exert a great impact on people’s daily life, which results in the contradiction between environment and human existence. As environment problem has become more and more serious, the number of environmental dispute is growing accordingly. To solve environmental disputes, corresponding mechanism is need so as to form a complete set of legal norms for the reason that the present unsound legal norms in our country cannot offer a good way to solve these disputes timely and effectively. An imperfect law cannot ensure the environmental rights and interests of its citizens. As a result, people will fail to solve the corresponding environmental problems in time, and environmental problem will become more and more serious until it falls into a vicious cycle. Besides, it will produce a bad influence on social harmony and stability.Based on the above-mentioned situation, we are making our effects to perfect the corresponding legal norms step by step. In December 2009, by passing the law of The Tort Liability Act, some deficiencies of the environmental damage compensation system are improved, and it sets standards for no-fault liability of environmental damages as well as puts forward the inversion principle of burden of proof. By passing the law of The Environmental Protection Act in April 2014, we step up efforts to increase the punishment strength for environmental damage with an emphasis on enterprises’ illegal dredge activities. The perfection of legal norms for environmental damages is of great significance to solve environmental disputes, and it is also an active response to the application of environmental damage compensation legislation research in academic circle. To deal with the present serious environmental problems in our country and solve the increasing environmental disputes, it is important and urgent to conduct further studies on the environmental damage compensation legislation.To begin with, this paper makes an explaination to basic theories relevant to environmental damages so as to provide theoretical support for people who are trying to protect their environmental rights and interests from the perspective of the environmental right. It also plans to set standards to distinguish the relationship between environmental damages and general damage so as to understand the particularity of environmental damages, which will lay a solid theoretical foundation for this research. Secondly, the paper makes an exploration to the legislative status quo and existing problems of environmental damage compensation in our country. Though there is a growing number of legislations for environmental damage compensation and we are making no efforts to perfect them, problems such as inharmonious legislative structure, conflicts between laws and regulations as well as legal gap still exist. Then, this paper tries to make an analysis of the legislative model and its corresponding system in foreign countries so as to learn some legislative experiences which are conform to China’s actual conditions from them. Finally, based on the above-mentioned analysis, this paper aims to put forward measures to perfect the environmental damage compensation legislation in our country as well as make up for the defects in present legislation for environmental damage compensation from the perspective of the path and content of legislation.