On The Protection Of The Public's Right To Know In Public Environmental Emergencies

For nearly recent 30 years, environmental pollution problem with the China's economic development is getting worse. Although economy grows rapidly, we have been alerted by the natural environment itself, such as blowout in Kaixian county Sichuan, cadmium pollution event in Liuyang, sewage leakage of Zijin mining company, water pollution event in Lanzhou and so on. This is the abrupt environmental pollution incidents which often shocks the public. Confronted with this situation, we should rethink whether we forget the right to know on the environment, the basic rights of the public in the pursuit of economical development and already ignoring the bearing capacity of environment.In recent years, the environmental information system in our country has preliminary developed. But throughout an overall survey of the system, there are many shortcomings. In the Constitution, the Environmental Protection Act, the Information Disclosure Regulations as well as some environmental protection special laws, the right to know on the environment is stipulated in principle but not systematic, neither could effectively protect the public's environmental rights and interests. In view of this, the author tries to know how to safeguard the public's environmental right in emergency environmental accidents and find out the defects and disadvantages of the system in our country, and puts forward some corresponding perfecting suggestions.The first chapter of this article makes a basical definition on abrupt environment affairs and the public environmental right, and gives an analysis of the characteristics of emergency environmental accidents and the necessity of guaranteeing the public environmental right to know. The second chapter is based on the analysis of water pollution incidents in Lanzhou, then to find out the outstanding problems when the public exercising the right to know on the environment in our country, analyze these problems and find the root cause, which is deficiency in the system of public's right to know on the environment. The third chapter mainly is to introduce mature foreign legal system of the right to know on the environment and its enlightenment to our country. The fourth chapter is to put forward some suggestions. In epilogue part, the argument of the article that the water pollution emergencies in Lanzhou is reiterated as an example, analyzing the problems to the enforcement of the public's environmental right to know and giving some improving suggestions aimed at the problems existing in the actual, and the epilogue part serves as a summary of this article.