A Study Of Government Environmental Responsibility In Constructing An Environment-friendly Society

The service-oriented responsible governments deservedly have the responsibility to protect and improve the environment. The environmental responsibility of the Chinese government is highlighted due to the worsening of environmental problems in China. The Chinese government environmental responsibility is of much significance for both the theoretical exploration and the practice of constructing harmonious relationship between government and citizens.Government environmental responsibility consists of four components: environmental political responsibility, environmental administrative responsibility, environmental legal responsibility, and environmental moral responsibility, which form the government environmental responsibility system. The government environmental political responsibility covers positive and negative parts. Its safeguard mechanism involves power check system, transparent government system, and the individual official moral training system. The government environmental administrative responsibility covers the subjective and objective responsibilities. Its safeguard system includes three respects: the executive environmental awareness, the construction of external control system, and the generation of internal control system. The government environmental legal responsibility covers the government environmental administrative responsibility, the government environmental civil responsibility, and the government environmental criminal responsibility. Its safeguard mechanism includes three parts: establishment and improvement system, the advocacy and implementation system, and the monitoring and feedback system for the government environmental laws and regulations. The government environmental moral responsibility covers: the compulsory and ideal responsibilities. Its safeguard mechanism involves the self-discipline system with administrative conscience as its core, and the other-discipline system with executive reputation and legislative supervision as its main content.With its national context, the contemporary government environmental responsibility can not only make use of the international experience, but also tightly connects itself with the green trend. The establishment of a goal for the scientific development and building a socialist harmonious society, the continuous improvement of the environmental protection system, the public awareness for the environment protection, and the enhancement of the global cooperation and communication etc, constitute the national context. The environmental strategic transformation practice of Japan, Korea, Germany, the United States and the other countries provides China with international experiences. With the influence of the global green trend, the Chinese participation in global environmental management in broad cooperation areas and diverse cooperation forms relies mainly on the government, supplemented by the environment NGO. Under such circumstances, the goal of the contemporary Chinese government environmental responsibility is to build an environment-friendly civil society, to develop a sound government environmental management system, and to shape an environmental management standard.The motivation to enforce the government environmental responsibility in China is to avoid the governmental ineffectiveness in improving environment. If the environmental problems are reduced and simplified to be an economic problem, it can be found that environmental problems are by-products of the infinite expansion of human economic activities. The economic root of the environmental problems lies in the fact that the externality of human economic activities causes the ineffectiveness of the market; meanwhile, the absence of government environmental responsibility may also cause the governmental ineffectiveness when dealing with the problems of externality. The governmental environmental responsibility may be absent on two major levels -- the awareness and the fulfillment of the responsibility. These may lead to the consequences such as the loss of public environmental benefits, the damage to the legality of the government, and the inequality of the development of social environment. The causes for the absence of the responsibility include the governmental monopoly of supply of public environmental products, the limited rationale of the government, the absence of public benefit sense, and so on. Therefore, according to these phenomenon, results, and causes, it is imperative to solve the governmental ineffectiveness through enforcing the environmental responsibility of the government.In face of increasingly deteriorating biological environment, the government should start from the following four aspects to strengthen the government environmental responsibility: laying the groundwork for the enforcement of government environmental responsibility, constituting the framework of government environmental responsibility, designing the accountability mechanism, and developing good environment governance. The key lies in improving scientific decision-making capacity, enforcement capacity, interest coordination capacity, and crisis management capacity in the environmental administration. Since various "mistakes" made in the government eco-environment management, the government should build the institutional framework for environmental responsibility so as to embed the government environmental responsibility. When it is embedded in the political field, the government has to establish a complete set of rules with easy operation. When it is embedded in the economic field, the government should attach great importance to scientific development. When it is embedded in the cultural field, the government should pay more attention to ecological civilization. When it is embedded in the social field, the government should promote the environmental democracy and self-governance. The multiple accountability of government environmental responsibility includes political accountability of administration, the legal accountability of the judiciary, the social accountability of the media and public, and the executive accountability of the government. The good environment governance is demanded by the enforcement of the government environmental responsibility. To this end, it is necessary to promote inter-regional as well as the global cooperation in the environmental governance. Inter-regional cooperation among local governments is beneficial in exploring a "win-win" path characterized by a wider expansion, horizontal cooperation, and common development. It is required that governments at all levels draw on the successful experience in global environmental governance just as they have done in inviting investments and actively participate in the global cooperative governance. Driven by strong environmental responsibility, the government will promote the construction of a environment-friendly society.The value orientation of the contemporary Chinese government's environmental responsibility is the man-land theory, the tolerance-zone theory, and environmental economics. And its fundamental elements include sustainable development, environmental friendship, and intergenerational justice. The evaluation index of the contemporary Chinese government environmental responsibility is based on the following principles: the comprehensive principle, the scientific principle, the true information principle, the transparency and public-participation principle, the independent evaluation principle, and the measurable principle. In the content, it can be classified into the following dimensions: the system dimension, the behavior dimension, and the staff dimension. Its index system can be divided into three levels, three major areas, and twenty-five indicators.