Public Participation Paths And Institutional Safeguards In Environmental Information Disclosure

The ecological environment has no borders.Every public has the right to enjoy the environment and the obligation to protect the environment.Nowadays,environmental problems occur frequently,and environmental protection has entered the public’s view.In particular,the continuous outbreak of environmental mass events in recent years,Shifang in Sichuan,Kunming in Yunnan and other events have touched the sensitive nerves of the public and tested the government’s environmental management ability.One of the reasons is that the government’s environmental information disclosure is not in place and not in time.Since the reform and opening up,China has promulgated more than ten legal documents on public participation in the government’s environmental information disclosure system,including the key points of environmental protection work report,the environmental protection law of the People’s Republic of China,the measures for environmental information disclosure,the measures for public participation in environmental impact assessment of the People’s Republic of China,and the regulations on the management of environmental protection of construction projects.It redefines the relationship between planning environmental information disclosure and construction project environmental information disclosure,improves the status of planning environmental information disclosure in the whole environmental information disclosure system,and makes the development of China’s legislation on environmental information disclosure enter a new level.However,in the future development path,there is still a long way to go.On the one hand,the speed of social development is getting faster,various environmental problems emerge one after another,and the lag of the legal system and the complexity of social development are intertwined and collided in the environmental sector,resulting in many problems.If these problems are not solved in time,the damage to the environment and the public will be endless;On the one hand,the government’s unwillingness to release environmental information and the public’s unwillingness to cooperate with the public in the follow-up work often leads to the gap between the administrative organs and the public.On the other hand,the government’s unwillingness to release environmental information and the public’s unwillingness to cooperate in the follow-up work often leads to the gap between the administrative organs and the public.In reality,the unclear way of public participation,the single channel of public participation in environmental protection and the difficulty of safeguarding rights in the relief system are also the key problems to be solved in the development of the future legal system.The public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system,which is the integration of the public participation system and the government environmental information disclosure system,can well solve the above problems.The organic combination of public power and private rights will bring unexpected synergy.Public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system is an important system rising with the development of modern government management system.It plays a key role in the construction of modern environmental governance system and environmental protection.It is the facilitator of the dialogue between the public,enterprises and the government.It solves the problems of public participation ability,blocked channels for the public to obtain environmental information,judicial relief It plays a good guiding role in the ways and means of participation;The public participation system has always been in the core position in the whole system.On the one hand,the public participation system is the way to realize the public’s right to know,participate and supervise the environment.It is the institutional support behind these rights.As an inevitable requirement of democratic politics,only the public with support can better achieve the goal of democratic politics.The two complement each other and advance and retreat together;On the other hand,it is also the embodiment of democratic politics in the fields of legislation,judicature and administration,which is the inevitable trend of social development in the future.The Ministry of ecology and environment of the People’s Republic of China issued the "14th five year plan" for ecological and environmental protection in 2021,which emphasizes the need to deal with the two relations.First,the relationship between stability and progress.We emphasize making progress while maintaining stability and laying a good foundation first.As the saying goes,if the foundation is not strong,we should not only lay a good institutional foundation,but also lay a good public foundation,especially in the publicity and education of environmental protection.From theory to practice is the natural law for the promotion of all affairs.Only by understanding the significance of environmental protection and environmental information disclosure in theory can we be more proactive in practice Cooperate with the implementation of relevant policies.We should work together to promote high-quality economic development and high-level protection of the ecological environment.We should not develop the economy at the cost of damaging the environment or carry out other social activities that damage the environment;The second is the relationship between quantity and quality,which not only pursues the change of quantity,but also pays more attention to the improvement of quality,emphasizes the development of connotation,emphasizes the sense of public participation,encourages the public to carry out environmental protection activities and actively participate in the cause of environmental protection;Encourage enterprises to carry out technological innovation and develop environment-friendly products;Encourage social organizations to join the environmental protection family,give play to their organizational characteristics,and establish communication channels for the government,enterprises and the public.Taking the public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system as the starting point,combined with the characteristics of China’s national conditions,this paper analyzes the advantages of the system,explores how to implement the system well in China,and selects the legislative process and practical experience of three countries for comparative analysis.The first is the United States,because the United States is a global pioneer in public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system,and its development has strong reference significance.Although China’s legal system is different from that of the United States,its federal and continental dual track parallel legislative system is very worthy of our reference;The second is Britain,because it is the signatory country of Aarhus convention,and most of the British legal systems are formulated with Aarhus Convention as a reference.As a milestone in the history of environmental law,Aarhus convention is very worthy of reference;Finally,Japan is selected,because it is an Asian country and its development process is similar to that of China.Combined with domestic legal documents,court cases and typical cases in different periods,it makes a comparative analysis,summarizes the relevant contents in tabular form,forms an intuitive comparison,goes to the rough and extracts the fine,draws on the strong points to make up for the weak points,and analyzes the existing problems and deficiencies from the current legal norms and practical operation of our country,Through the comparative analysis of foreign advanced laws and regulations and cases,and combined with China’s national conditions,this paper puts forward improvement suggestions suitable for China’s social characteristics.The full text is generally divided into five parts: the first part is the introduction,which mainly introduces the source of this topic,research background,research methods and ideas,as well as the comments of domestic early scholars on public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system,and the views of foreign scholars at different stages on the system.The second part introduces the concept,characteristics and development status of public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system,including the connotation of the system,the laws and regulations since the reform and opening up and the characteristic provisions in different periods,as well as the respective concepts,characteristics and opportunities of the government environmental information disclosure system and the public participation system,as well as the theoretical and practical value of combining the above two systems,Public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system has a synergistic effect on the basis of combining the characteristics of the two systems.The third part mainly analyzes the current situation of public participation in China’s current government environmental information disclosure system,represented by typical cases,leads to surface problems and deep causes through cases,and explores six specific problems in the legal system,administrative system,non-governmental environmental protection organizations and public groups,including the unclear qualification of the subject of public participation,the lack of public participation ability There are six problems: the unimpeded access of the public to information,the imperfect legal guarantee mechanism and the imperfect environmental administrative public interest litigation system.The third part mainly studies the root causes of the above problems,including institutional reasons and human reasons.It finds the problems from other aspects such as system and people,and puts forward the corresponding solutions and future development ideas in the fifth chapter below.The fourth part mainly introduces the practice of public participation in the government environmental information disclosure system in foreign countries in the United States,the United Kingdom and Japan,analyzes the characteristics of relevant laws and regulations,intercepts the more distinctive legal provisions,and summarizes them into a table form for our reference.The fifth part puts forward corresponding improvement suggestions for the third part,mainly from the aspects of legal concept system,government organs,public groups,non-governmental environmental protection organizations and administrative public interest litigation.The contents include: how to reasonably define the scope of "public",provide public participation ability,improve the environmental information disclosure system,explore the construction of environmental protection public interest organization system,improve the legal guarantee mechanism Expand the plaintiff qualification scope of public participation in environmental administrative public interest litigation.