| Environmental criminal law, in a modern sense, appeared at the middle of 20 century. Human Beings have been suffering from environmental harassment when they developed economy and over exploited the natural resource and industry pollution. Long- accumulated problems regarding environment are gradually coming up and it started to "revenge" man by its own way such as extinction of species. Since then, human beings began to face the challenges raised by environmental issues. The international community as a whole began to concern the environment and it is becoming the subject on how to protect the environment through laws, which is deeply considered and tried to resolve the environmental harassment by world society, every government and jurists.Comparing with other developed states, protection of environment through criminal law in China is relatively late. There are two main reasons: (1) The legislation was falling behind of the practice and even though there were some laws regulating environment, most of them were too general. The legislation regarding environmental criminal law was quite late either and there essentially was no codification of environmental criminal law until the adoption of revised criminal law in 1997. Before 1997, the punishment of crimes against environment mainly depended on the special criminal laws and accessorial criminal punishment of administrative laws. However, they were so broken that could not effectively apply to protect environment. 1997 Criminal Code creates the preliminary environmental criminal law and independently provides the section of "Crimes against Environment and Resources" in Chapter of "Crimes against Social Order", which contents 14 types of crimes [now 15 kinds of crimes added by Amendment (â…¢) ]. However, these criminal punishment against environment could not overcome the traditional concept that is to some extent, much more ossification and lack in innovation ideas on legislative model. It becomes necessary result for social evolution and human beings' living condition to add more provisions and enhance the level of punishment. (2) Theoretical research on this topic is weak. At present, it can be said that theoretical research on environmental criminal law is still weak and late. There is lacking reference material coming from practice especially lacking in cases.Researching on environmental criminal law brings new thinking way in academic field and practice. Meanwhile, many problems are coming up and need to further and deeply study, for instance, pollution as a kind of crime is totally different from traditional common crimes. Current criminal law can not effectively punish this kind of crime. Many other issues such as administrative nature of environmental criminal law and protecting interest of environmental criminal law are provided so general that can not effectively punish these kinds of crimes. It makes the traditional criminal law have to face new challenges and research.The dissertation studies specially on fundamental theory of environmental criminal law. The author has two considerations for doing so. First, the dissertation is trying to study basic theory of environmental criminal law, which means that does not include any special crimes. Second, there are so many debates on environmental criminal law. However, the dissertation is seeking to study on general principles rather than spreading to study the debates. The dissertation has seven chapters. They are as followings: chapter one is "legislative form and concept of environmental criminal law". Chapter two is "development and characteristics of environment criminal law". Chapter three is "the concept of environmental crime". Chapter four is "the object of environmental crime". Chapter five is "subjec of environmental crime". Chapter six is "mens rea of environmental crime". Chapter seven is "actus reus of environmental crime". Chpter eight is "establishment of punishment in environmental criminal law"...
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