The Research On The Legal Status Of Environmental Protection NGOs

The subject of environmental protection has aroused people's attention day by day, with a wide range of environmental issues appeared, such as: green-house effect, acid rain, El Nino phenomenon, ozone layer cavity and the increasing of the endangered species extinction, ext. In addition to government, those issues also arouse the enthusiasm of the public participation to protect environment. Meanwhile, environmental NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) have developed continuously, which have become an independent environmental protection force organized by those consciousness public, and playing more and more vital role in worldwide environmental protection. Some global environmental NGOs also emerged, which are playing the tremendous roles in global environmental protection affairs.Compared with those developed countries, the function of Chinese environmental NGOs is extremely limited, at the aspect of environmental protection issues participation, which because of the own defect of Chinese environmental NGOs, and also the differences in cultural background and social structure of China and West countries. But the main reason is that the related legal system is imperfect. In our country, the environmental NGOs are lack of support in the legal status for a long time, due to long-term influenced by the old planned economy system. Therefore, the superiority function of the environmental NGOs is extremely confined, which is not conducive to the development and process of the environmental protection affairs. At present, the perspectives of research on the environmental NGOs are mainly from the theory of organization and administration, and are also quite few from the analysis of legal science. Therefore, this article takes the legal analysis as a point of view, focusing on the argumentation of legal status of environmental NGOs.Therefore, the first part of this article outlined the definition, characteristic and existence basis of the environmental NGOs. Then, the next part further discussed the legal status of the foreign environmental NGOs in the substantive and procedural law. Moreover, this part also analyzed the shortcomings of relevant legal system of our country. Those shortcomings were precisely the reason that environmental NGOs were lack of a well environment for development, which limited the advantage of the environmental NGOs and were not conducive to the development of environmental affairs. Finally, based on drawing some experiences from the related legal rules of foreign countries, and combined the basis of our actual national conditions, this article reached a conclusion: Firstly, in concept, governments should transform the original guiding principle which is the severely management and development limited, and create a loose environment for the development of the environmental NGOs. Secondly, in legal system, government should reduce the limitation of registration, change the administration pattern and consummate the rules of rights and obligations of the NGOs in the substantive law. Thirdly, in the aspect of procedural law, the system of "friends of the court" should be introduced, which will be able to make the NGOs playing more important role in the environment lawsuit.