On Public Participation In Environmental Protection Issues

Environmental problem is a great challenge for all of us and limits the development of human beings. Besides governmental management, environment, as a typical public product, needs more participation of the whole society. The extent and degree of public participation determines heavily the level of environmental protection. Public participation in environmental protection is an important way of solving environmental problems in our country and a great impetus to environmental protection. For better protection of our living environment, we should keep our eyes on the necessity of public participation, improve the ways of public participation, encourage the public to participate in environmental protection in different levels and establish all kinds of effective mechanisms of public participation in environmental protection gradually so that economy, society and environment can develop in a harmony and sustaining way. Although we have made greater progress in environmental protection, environmental pollution and ecological damage are still serious, one of its fundamental reasons is less public participation in environmental protection. Enhancing the consciousness of public participation and widening the scope and ways for public participation will be the necessary ways if we want to get rid of the puzzledom. Comparatively, in the developed countries of the west, public participation plays an important role in environmental protection and their related mechanisms are further improved. The paper elaborates a few problems of public participation in environmental protection from the practice of public participation in our country. The main form of public participation is government-dominant; Fields of participation is imbalance; Public participation is less in degree and effect; The influence of social groups, especially non-government organizations of environmental protection is very limited and so on. At the same time, the paper gives personal suggestions for public participation by using foreign experience for reference in order to advance public participation and environmental protection in our country. First of all, we should establish and improve the mechanism of public participation in our country from three aspects: the law mechanism, the politic mechanism and the social mechanism. There are four suggestions to the law mechanism establishing and improvement: Establishing the status of public rights of environment, making the environmental information into the open actively, strengthen the democratization of environmental decision-making and supervision mechanism, and ensure the public rights of lawsuit for commonweal and getting compensation. To perfect the mechanism of political ,attention in discussions concerning the affairs of environmental resources, environmental resources involved in the development of legal policy document attention should be paid to public comments and receive public supervision of the implementation of environmental laws and regulations, and establishmented of the Environmental Protection to the Government Performance Evaluation system;Social mechanism rely on the improvement of environmental education and public opinion to achieve.In the second, we should enhance the consciousness of public participation in environmental participation and change the public consumer concepts, enhance environmental protection NGO's self-construction,and optimize the effect of public participation in it.Therefore, the aim of the paper is to give suggestions on how to make the public participate in environmental protection and exert their function and effect sufficiently.