Research On Legal Regulation Of Commercial Banks’ Environmental Liability

From the economic point of view, the lack of adequate institutional constraints of society is the reason for environmental pollution. Since environmental pollution is externality of enterprise development, it will not constitute the cost of these enterprises. Therefore, taking into account the economic development and environmental protection, we need a reasonable system design.In April 2015, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Ecological Civilization", which points out that the overall level of the construction of ecological civilization in our country still lags behind economic and social development. In September 2015, the State Council issued the "Overall Program of Ecological Civilization System Reform" which encourages financial institutions to increase green credit. On January 1, 2015, the new "Environmental Protection Law" comes into effect. It states that "all units and individuals have the obligation to protect the environment". Since the consequences of environmental pollution caused by contemporary violations of environmental laws may reflect the next generation, environmental law sets serious behavior constraints to protect environmental rights and interests of future generations.However, as a legal person, the commercial bank has a certain particularity, which is decided by its special status in the society. China’s commercial banks mainly "absorb deposits, distribute loans", and the main source of profit is the spread between deposits and loans. First is the direct environmental responsibility of commercial banks. The responsibility is on the basis of the "environmental protection law". Indirect environmental responsibility comes from commercial banks as a corporate finance in the main channel. By comparison, it is easy to see that the meaning of commercial bank indirect environmental legal liability is far higher than that of the direct legal responsibility for environment, if commercial banks can fully practice the indirect environmental legal responsibility they can improve the traditional heavy polluting enterprises burden. Guiding the social capital flows at the same time also can stimulate the transformation of industries, achieving GDP green.The article is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the related concepts of environmental responsibility of the commercial banks, enterprises. Corporate citizenship theory, public goods theory and externality theory are the economic theoretical basis of commercial banks’ environmental responsibility. The second part mainly introduces the status quo of environmental responsibility of China’s commercial banks. It is divided into two aspects: on the one hand, concern for the environment of commercial bank, the legal practice, on the other hand the performance of domestic banks in the aspect of environmental responsibility. The third part explains the practice of the international and the United States, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada on the environmental responsibility of the relevant legal provisions of the commercial banks. The fourth part puts forward the concrete idea of the environmental liability of our country’s commercial banks. Finally, considering that commercial banks do not bear the responsibility for the pollution and even the consequence caused by negative impact, we should pursue the legal responsibility of the commercial banks, including criminal responsibility of the strict liability form, corresponding civil liability and administrative responsibility.