The Establishmest Of Liability For Environment Damage In China

As environmental problems in China become increasingly serious and Chinese citizens'awareness of maintaining their rights is reinforced gradually, disputes over the liability for environmental damage increase drastically. The issue on the compensation for environmental damage is closely connected not only to the rational exploration and protection of environmental resources, but also to the fundamental environmental rights and interests of a nation's citizens and the implementation of an environmental legal system. Therefore, no matter in developed countries or developing countries, researches on compensation for environmental damage advance rapidly. Since China is facing the same situation, it has been placed on its legislative agenda to enact comprehensive and systematic laws on compensation for environmental damage.Environmental infringement refers to the situation that pollutions or behavior of damaging the environment cause bodily injury, the impairment of property or the damage of ecological environment. The compensation liability for damage caused by environmental infringement is a new type of civil liability that has specific connotations and characteristic features such as the complexity of reasons for injury, hidden consequences, and so on, that are totally different from those of general torts. In traditional civil theories civil rights and interests are divided into personal rights and interests and property rights and interests, and don't include environmental rights. In this article, the current situation and problems in China's existing compensation system for environmental damage were analyzed. And the necessity and importance of establishing a new compensation system for environmental damage were elaborated. Because foreign studies on environmental damage compensation systems are far more advanced than those in China, it is necessary for China to borrow advanced theories from foreign countries. In the meanwhile, it is of especial importance to formulate environmental damage compensation laws that suit the specific conditions of China. In this article, four approaches were introduced to consummate China's environmental damage compensation system including enhancing plaintiff's subject qualification, unifying criteria for the cause-effect relationship, determining standards for discriminating the liability of joint tortfeasors, and establishing environmental damage compensation regulations.