An Analysis Of The Legal Effectiveness For China's Environmental Impact Assessment System

Nowadays, China has established the environmental impact assessment system (EIA System) based on Law of the People's Republic of China on Appraising of Environment Impacts. It is a system conclusion of the practice of environmental impact assessment system in the past 30 years and its significance is self-evident. However, the EIA system, in practice, reflects some imperfect phenomenon such as "high implementation percentage but poor effectiveness". It is not difficult to find the reasons according to the results of the analysis in effectiveness of the EIA system:the underlying reason is the function defects of the EIA System, the Secondary reason is the imbalance system design in rights and responsibilities which based on those function defects, and the direct reason is the various operation errors of the EIA system.Three factors that led to the poor effectiveness and affected the realization of the EIA system function:a) unstable national environmental policy, b) Formal public participation in the EIA system, c) Absence of environmental public interest litigation system. In addition, the dominance of the administration power, to a certain extent, alienated the EIA system somehow. And it is obstacles to realization of the prevention features of the EIA system.In view of these factors, the improvement of China's EIA system should focus on from the following aspects:In terms of legislation, we should take the following measures such as amplification of the application object, perfection of public participation, and reinforcement of the legal responsibility. In law enforcement, we should take some enforcement approach of fine alternative in order to avoid profit-persuading behavior of local environmental protection department, and strengthen public participation of Individuals and enterprises. In justice, we should establish a judicial inquiry mechanism for environmental assessment activities, and strengthen governmental responsibility in the EIA administrative decision-making scientific and democratic.