A Study Of Private Enforcement Of Environmental Law

Private enforcement law is a common feature of the current social and economic system. In some cases, it has a higher efficiency than the public enforcement law. Generally speaking, it is believed that it is common in the field of environmental protection, and should be strongly advocated. In this paper, private environmental law enforcement means that private enforcers exercise their rights to monitor, litigation, sanctions and execution against environmental illegal acts, in order to safeguard their own rights and interests or social public interests and achieve the purpose of environmental protection.Globally, since the 1970s, many countries like the United States and Japan increasingly come to rely upon private law enforcement as a means of attaining public environmental objectives. Over the past four decades, private enforcers have been playing an important role in the implementation of the environmental law of in these nations. Whereas, compared with these countries, Although China established its environmental law system, its implementation, falls well short of the public's expectations. In that paper, it is believed that inadequately private enforcement law is one of the key causes of under-enforcement. In China, the private enforcement law is a sufficiently new phenomenon in the environmental law that little is known about it. What determines the amount of private enforces' activities? What are the consequences of these acts? Whether and to what extent under-enforcement of private enforcement may be attributable to the legislature for inadequately designed legislation? These questions should be focused and analyzed.Therefore, in this paper, many questions about private environmental law enforcement will be explored, including why and how the private enforcers implement environmental statutes, and whether private enforcement can be an effective cure for the environmental under-enforcement problem and so on. This paper proceeds as follows. The first chapter briefly defines the concept, scope, characteristics of private environmental law enforcement. The second chapter analyses the theoretical basis, motivation, function, advantages and disadvantages of private environmental law enforcement. Based on the theoretical analyses, the third chapter analyses from the aspect of theory and practice of foreign environmental law, the trend of legislation abroad and the experience of private enforcement in other countries are summarized. The fourth chapter summarizes the development in private enforcement of China's environmental law regime. After that, linking with empirical analysis, the status quo and the existing problems of private enforcement is evaluated and analyzed. This part finally proposes a few obstacles of private enforcement existing in the environmental law regime. In the fifth chapter, many doubts and arguments are analyzed, for example, whether private suits for public interest can or cannot be an effective remedy for under-enforcement? By describing and analyzing private enforcement law pros and cons seen from theory and practice, this part finds it is necessary and feasible to enhance the role of private enforcers in the maintenance of environmental public interest, solving the problems of environmental pollution on a large scale and the implementation of the environmental law. Private enforcers through litigation, prosecutions and other ways can greatly promote public institutions to perform his duties, subsidize government's insufficient enforcement, and maximize the overall effect of the environmental law. In the last chapter some suggestions on how to improve private enforcers' function in the existing enforcement scheme is gave, including improving the economic benefits of the legislation, promote the private enforcers' rights, strengthen the motivation and safeguard system of the private enforcers and so on.