Study On The Judicial Confirmation System Of Compensation Agreement For Ecological Environmental Damage

After the occurrence of ecological environmental damage,it is often time-consuming and costly to take litigation remedies.The "eco-environmental damage compensation negotiation" is a new path to solve the problem of insufficient single litigation relief.However,the ecological damage compensation agreement reached after the "compensation negotiation" depends entirely on the ability and consciousness of the obligor to perform the repair of the damaged ecological environment.At this point,the administrative organs,as the rightful owner of compensation,lack enforcement power in the face of the possible risks of the agreement’s implementation.On this basis,the Reform Plan of the Compensation System for Ecological and Environmental Damage establishes the judicial confirmation system of the compensation agreement for ecological and environmental damage.However,the system has only provided for a few principles since its setup in 2018,and there are still many controversies and problems in its operation in practice.In order to implement the accountability of the perpetrators of ecological damage and to realize the timely restoration of the damaged ecological environment and safeguard the social and environmental public interests,the improvement of the judicial confirmation system of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreements should be studied.The study on the improvement of the judicial confirmation system of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreement needs to be examined from two aspects:the institutional basis and the current practice.First,the basis of the judicial confirmation system of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreements.The "special nature of ecological environmental damage compensation agreements under the double-order theory" and the "limitations of legislation and notarization in the way of giving compensation agreements enforceability" provide the theoretical and practical basis for the establishment of the system.From the point of view of the significance of the system,the judicial confirmation system of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreements not only gives the compensation agreements enforceability,but also helps to monitor the operation of the rights of compensation rights holders and protects the rights of citizens to participate in national environmental management.Second,in terms of the current practice of the judicial confirmation system of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreements.The basic contents of the system can be examined through the judicial interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court and the consultation documents issued by the local provincial administrative organs.Meanwhile,the actual operation of the system in judicial practice can be analyzed by taking the ruling documents of cases applying for judicial confirmation of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreements between 2017 and 2020 as a research sample.After examining the basis of the system and its current practice,we can see that the current system of judicial confirmation of ecological and environmental damage compensation agreements has a series of problems,such as "the review by the people’s courts is only formal","insufficient restraint in the exercise of the rights of compensation rights holders" and "unclear procedural provisions of the system".and "the procedural provisions of the system are not clear" and a series of problems.The improvement of the judicial confirmation system of ecological environmental damage compensation agreement needs to consciously explore its solutions to the above problems.First,it should be clearly stipulated that the people’s courts should exercise the power of substantive review and establish the criteria for substantive review by the courts in terms of both the content of the agreement and the basis for its conclusion.Secondly,by specifying the ecological and environmental damage compensation agreement as a "special agreement with the characteristics of a civil contract but involving environmental public interests",the exercise of the rights of the compensation right holder should be limited to a certain limit.At the same time,for "supplementary agreements",the legislature should respond to the question of "whether the right holder of compensation should reapply for judicial confirmation of the ’supplementary agreement’" in the normative documents or in the ruling documents of the people’s courts.Third,the provisions on the application period and the competent court should be unified;the conditions for the people’s courts to apply the hearing procedure in the process of confirmation review should be clarified,and the procedural rules of the judicial confirmation system of compensation agreements should be further improved.