Thoughts On Civil Law Relief Of Ecological Environment Damage

With the rapid development of population and science and technology,human beings overuse various natural resources on the earth,resulting in increasingly serious ecological degradation and severe environmental protection situation.The traditional tort liability law mainly relives private interests,and has congenital defects in the relief of ecological environmental damage,the relief effect is not satisfactory.In order to better realize the relief of the public interests of ecological environment,Articles 1234 and 1235 of the Civil Code for the first time include the liability for ecological environment damage into the tort law for adjustment.However,the liability for ecological environmental damage belongs to the relief of environmental public interests and should be included in the adjustment scope of public law,while civil law focuses on the relief of private interests and advocates the idea of autonomy of private law.Therefore,this system arrangement leads to the confusion of civil law system,restricts the effectiveness of relief of damaged environment,and even affects the effective development of ecological civilization construction.Ecological environmental damage is a kind of damage caused to the ecological environment itself.The object of relief for ecological environmental damage is the substantial environmental public interest,which has the characteristics of non-exclusive and non-exclusive.Ecological environmental damage civil law relief theory of legal interests rather than environmental rights theory as the theoretical basis.According to the above two provisions,the principle of fault liability applies to the principle of liability in civil liability for ecological environmental damage.The scope of liability applies to "pollution of environment and destruction of ecology",and the way of liability bearing has increased,including "repair liability" and "compensation liability".We can see that there are deficiencies in the legislation such as inconsistent logic system,unclear principle of responsibility and lack of preventive responsibility.By studying the judicial cases of environmental civil public interest litigation and ecological environmental damage compensation litigation,it can be seen that there are still some practical problems in this system,such as difficulties in implementing the restoration responsibility,unclear compensation amount standard and application obstacles in the judicial appraisal of environmental damage.By referring to the legislation of the European Union and its member states,the United States and Japan on the relief system of eco-environmental damage,we can consider improving the relief system of the civil law on eco-environmental damage from the following aspects: Firstly,in terms of the selection of legislative mode,Article 1234 and Article 1235 of the Civil Code should be deleted,and the contents related to the liability for ecological environmental damage should be adjusted by the environmental law.Specifically,the mode of special chapter legislation should be adopted,and it should be stipulated in the chapter of Ecological Environmental Liability of the Environmental Code.Secondly,in principle,the liability should distinguish between environmental tort liability and ecological environmental damage liability,and clarify the premise of "illegality".Third,to supplement the preventive responsibility,environmental governance should not only control,but also strengthen prevention,to prevent potential and uncertain environmental risks,in order to achieve the most effective protection of environmental public interests.Finally,we should improve the supporting system of ecological and environmental damage relief,build the compensation management system of ecological and environmental damage in litigation,and establish a special environmental fund account.A reasonable appraisal and evaluation system should be established to avoid relying too much on expert opinions.Judges should make both technical and legal judgments,and the legal judgments should cover the determination of loss scope,consultation plans and restoration plans for ecological and environmental damage.