A Rearch On The Plaintiff Quantification Of Environmental Protection Organizations In Environmental Public Interest Litigation

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of environmental disputes while environmental contamination is becoming a more and more severe issue. Considering the special property of natural environment and resources that are owned by the public, the current accusation and complaint system in our country cannot match the growing complexity of environmental conflicts. More efforts are also called on the contamination remedy. Therefore, it is in great demand to establish an environmental public interest litigation system.The major argument is to build up plaintiff quantification for the whole environmental public interest litigation system. Environmental protection organizations have their unique advantages of being the plaintiff of environmental public interest litigation because they are non-profit and non-governmental. Since 2009, several environmental protection organizations have successfully filed environmental public interest lawsuit, which provide us detailed practice experience. The new Civil Procedure Law, passed in 2012, formulates the system of environmental public interest litigation and acknowledges the qualification of environmental protection organizations. However, the current regulations are lack of practical guidelines and raise great debates. It is thus necessary to discuss more detailed regulations. In addition, environmental protection organizations are faced with many difficulties when participating lawsuits related to environmental public interest because of their own property and the society limits. Based on matured system from other countries, current lawsuit situation in China and previous practice and discussions, this thesis will explore the possible law system, which is compatible with Chinese society.In addition to introduction and conclusion, this pthesis includes five parts. The first part gives an overview of the environmental public interest litigation and the environmental protection organization. In this part, it introduces the definition, the background and the characteristics of the environmental public interest litigation as well as theoretical basis of plaintiff quantification. It also intriduces the definition and characteristics of the environmental protection organization as well as its advantages of being the plaintiff of environmental public interest litigation. In the second part, it mainly introduces some of the practical experience of foreignal environmental protection organizations' participation in environmental public interest litigation, including citizen suit in The United States and group suit in Europe. The American legal system is a case law system and two classic cases filed by environmental protection organizations are introduced. It also introduces the provisions of European countries and the EU. In addition, it makes a comparative analysis about them to finds their differences and indifferences so that we can provide a reference for the environmental protection organization's participating lawsuits related to environmental public interest in China. The third part investigates the current situation of legislation about environmental protection organizations' plaintiff quantification in the environmental public interest litigation. It includes the law and local regulations, which have been promulgated or are still being revised. What's more, it makes a summary about the legislative process in order to find out the focus of controversy. The fourth part studies the judical practice about environmental public interest lawsuits filed by environmental protection organizations. According to different defendants, it is devided into environmental administrative public interest litigation and environmental civil public interest litigation. Classic cases of different causes are choosed and a conclusion is made about China's judical circumstance. The last part is the most important part of this thesis and is about building our system that environmental protection organizations participate in environmental public interest litigation. Firstly, it introduces the development of environmental protection organizations in China and different viewpoints of scholars about environmental protection organizations as the plaintiff. Secondly, it evaluates those viewpoints with the experience and lessons of domestic and abroad. Lastly, it put forward its own point of view, including setting specific conditions about environmental protection organizations' participation in environmental public interest litigation and correcting the current management system of social arganizations in China. I hope that this thesis will provide some reference for the construction of our environmental public interest litigation.