The Nature Of The Ecological And Environmental Damage Compensation Litigation And Its Connection With Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation

In December 2017,the "Reform Plan for Compensation for Ecological and Environmental Damage" was released,which means that the compensation system for ecological and environmental damage has now entered the stage of full implementation after the two-year local pilot.This system that follows the pragmatic approach and is born of reality inevitably faces the dilemma of insufficient theoretical supply.In practice,it also has a series of problems such as unclear scope of application and poor connection with environmental civil public interest litigation.Defining the nature of the ecological and environmental damage compensation lawsuit(Hereinafter referred to as "ecological damage compensation lawsuit")and its positioning in the environmental litigation system plays an important role in solving these problems and ensuring the effective functioning of the system.The ecological damage compensation lawsuit and the private interest litigation have fundamental differences in the purpose of litigation,interest attribution and theoretical basis.The local government’s claim for compensation is based on the protection of ecological rather than economic values of resources.Therefore,the compensation for ecological damage compensation should not be attributed to private interest litigation.With the help of the principle of public trust,it can be found that the ecological damage compensation lawsuit based on the state ownership of natural resources and the public interest litigation maintain high consistency in terms of system purpose,interest attribution,litigation request,and separation of litigation rights from substantive rights.People’s need for a good environment and healthy ecology has led to the litigation of ecological damage compensation and further determined that the litigation interests ultimately belong to the public.So the compensation for ecological environmental damages should be positioned as a public interest litigation.By reconstructing the rights of the state ownership of natural resources,giving it management and control power in addition to the "ownership" power in the sense of traditional property law,we can obtain the theoretical basis of China’s ecological and environmental damage compensation system-the national ownership of natural resources as the public right in the constitution.Of course,the use of national ownership of natural resources as a theoretical basis also has certain limitations,that is,it cannot be applied to the resources shared by all human beings which cannot be included by the objects of ownership.For this reason,we can establish the two-dimensional theoretical foundation of ownership of natural resources as well as public trust theory with different types of resource elements used as the division.The theoretical basis of environmental civil public interest litigation is the theory of environmental rights and the legal litigation undertaking.So it can be found that the ecological damage compensation lawsuit filed by a social organization or procuratorial organ has different theoretical basis from the narrow environmental civil public interest litigation,and the scope of application is slightly different,but both belong to the general environmental civil public interest litigation system.In the future,the focus of environmental justice should be put on the link between the two systems of ecological and environmental damage compensation and environmental civil public interest litigation.In view of the particularity of the theoretical basis of ecological damage compensation system,other entities other than the government should be excluded from the qualification of ecological damage compensation litigation,and other subjects can only file environmental civil public interest litigation.It is supposed to establish the prosecution arrangement of"administrative organs-social organizations-procuratorial organs",and give full play to the efficiency of compensation consultation.Each entity should be allowed to sue as a common plaintiff,and a case notification and intercommunication sharing mechanism should be established between the entities to promote the continuous and stable operation of the environmental litigation system.