Study On The Voluntary Environmental Agreements

Restricted by various factors including “the finiteness of laws” and “the uncertainty of policies”,environmental governance in China has gradually shifted from the first stage centered on “command control” and the second stage with the core of “economic incentives”to the third stage focusing on “negotiation and cooperation”.A product of the third-generation environmental regulation,Voluntary Environmental Agreements(VEAs)are an external form for the government and enterprises to reach agreement on an equal basis on specific environmental issues.Striving to minimize environmental risks through contracts and maximize the interests of all parties,the VEAs system could cut law enforcement costs,reduce antagonism,mitigate the NIMBY effect,and prompt communication.Lagging behind those in other countries,China’s VEAs system is still in the pilot stage,far from achieving the expected effects of large-scale application and promotion.In addition,there are problems in practice such as the lack of a systematic legal and regulatory system and a uniform agreement template,excessive emphasis on administrative privileges,inadequate incentive measures,and imperfect supervision and relief mechanisms.Through analyzing certain model clauses,this thesis attempts to define the agreements’ legal nature,effectiveness,and legal requirements as well as clarify the correlation between specific clauses and existing laws and regulations.Furthermore,based on the reality of China’s environmental governance,relevant suggestions would be proposed to improve the VEAs.The thesis contains six parts:The introduction presents the VEAs’ research background and significance,domestic and overseas research status,research ideas and main content,and research methods and innovation.As an overview of VEAs,the first chapter introduces the concept,types and functions of VEAs,and further analyzes the VEAs’ legal nature on the basis of the incomplete contract theory,the negotiated administration theory,and the autonomous regulation theory.The second chapter discusses the legality of VEAs.This chapter mainly consists of two parts: the formal legal requirements and the substantive legal requirements.The former includes requirements of subjects,methods,and procedures;to ensure the effectiveness of the contract content,the latter focuses on the interaction between the legal administrative principles and the contract freedom principles in VEAs.The third chapter is the practical exploration of China’s VEAs.By observing the current status of legislation and application of China’s VEAs,the author attempts to investigate the shortcomings of China’s VEAs.The fourth chapter focuses on the comparative review of VEAs.Starting as early as in the 1950 s,the international practice of VEAs has formed a relatively mature operation model and obtained rich theoretical results.In this chapter,the author examines the Pollution Prevention Agreement in Japan,the European Voluntary Environmental Agreement System,the U.S.Voluntary Partnership Program,and the Environmental Protection Agreement System in Taiwan region,and analyzes the experience suitable for the development of China’s VEAs.In the fifth chapter,suggestions are proposed to improve China’s VEAs.On the basis of the content in previous chapters and existing problems in VEAs,the author puts forward in this chapter certain suggestions on perfecting China’s VEAs: amending legislation to clarify the legal basis,formulating the VEA template,regulating the application of administrative privileges,enriching the incentive measures,and improving the supervision and relief mechanism.The conclusion part includes a final summary,sorting,and generalization of the previous content,and raises the direction as well as questions for the future research.