Stduy On Public Participation In Environment Protection In China

Environmental public participation system is the important embodiment of democratic politics in the world and it has become the most important contents of the environmental law in every country. Public participation system was formed earliest in the 6th century BC to the 4th century BC in ancient Greece Athens citizens assembly and has been widely popular in present world. Establishing public participation system in environmental law is important for the public to supervise the environment administration behaviors and restrict environmental law-breaking activities. Public participation in environmental protection helps to improve environmental administrative efficiency, economize the government management resources and especially enhance the environmental protection consciousness and environmental protection responsibility. The environmental law public participation system of our country was expounded in the following four parts in this paper.The first chapter mainly discusses the necessity and theoretical basis of public participation in environmental protection. This section introduces the basic content of public participation in environmental law. Firstly, "The Public" is defined, which leads to the basic connotation of public participation in the system. The purpose is to emphasize the concept of anyone can participate in environmental protection which will not be rejected for any reason. Secondly, the theoretical basis of the public participation system mainly from the following three aspects:the legal theory, sociological theory basis and political theory basis. Three points of the legal theory are mainly introduced. The public property and public trust theory were proposed by professor Saxophone. The third is the premise and foundation of the above two points, namely environmental rights. The environment right is considered as one of the essential human rights and the most important legal basis for environmental public participation system.The second chapter emphatically introduces the contents of environmental public participation system. Scholars generally thought that the public participation system in environmental law mainly includes the following three aspects:environmental information right, environmental participation right and environmental relief right. The three aspects supplement each other and cannot be separated. First of all, the environmental information right refers that the public has the right to know the environment information on their lives, the world's environmental information and the state environmental management activities information. Environmental information right is the prerequisite and basis of the public participation system. For effectively participate in environmental protection activities, public must grasp the plenary environmental information. Secondly, the environmental participation right is the core content of the environmental protection public participation system. It is an aggregate right that integrated the environmental legislation, environmental administrative and environmental commonweal lawsuit. Environmental participation right mainly includes participating in the environmental legislation right, participating in the environmental decision-making power, hearing right of environmental administrative and environmental supervision right. Exercising these four public rights can not only make the realization of environmental rights has a legal basis and procedural safeguards, but also help to prevent the abuse power, passiveness administration and the damage of public environmental rights by illegal or inappropriate administrative activities. Finally, environmental relief right is mainly refers to environmental public interest litigation. At present, the most perfect environmental public participation system should belong to the United States. The United States first advocating environmental protection at the middle of the twentieth century and has accumulated much legislation experience in its public participation in environmental protection practice. In this section, the author uses the Unite State as a sample to introduce the environmental public litigation system.The third chapter discusses the actuality of environment protection public participation system at home and abroad. There have two purposes to write this section. The first purpose is introducing the environmental public participation in developed countries and in our country separately. The second purpose is to summarize the shortages and defects of public participation system in our country through comparing it between China and developed countries and then bring forward corresponding advice for improving the public participation system in China. First, the public participation systems of the United States, Canada and Japan are briefly introduced mainly from the following four aspects:legislation, judicial remedy, environmental non-governmental organization (NGO). Concerning the relevant public participation regulation In China's environmental law, there exist five obvious shortages such as:imperfect public participation legislation, incorrect public participation form, unreasonable public participation process, weak force of NGO and weakness public environmental consciousness.The fourth chapter mainly elaborates the improvement methods of the environmental public participation system of our country. Aiming at the scattered and disorderly characteristics of relevant regulations in public participation system in China environmental law, the author thinks that it should be improved by the following four aspects. First of all, the environmental rights should be established in constitution. Environmental right is the jurisprudence basis of the public participation system. To establish a complete system of public participation in environmental law system, we must first strengthen its foundation, the environmental right. Secondly, the legal status should be given to NGO. According to the unique public welfare of environment protection, special provisions should give to NGO in our laws, which can enable them to better safeguard the public interest. Thirdly, environmental public litigation system must be improved. Environmental public litigation system is ultimate way for public to achieve its own environment participation and it is also procedural safeguards for the realization of environmental public participation system. Improving the environmental public litigation system can not only benefit the China's legal construction, but also fit the gaps in environmental relief right. Finally, the public environmental protection consciousness should be improved in our country. Marxist dialectics claims that "material determines consciousness and the consciousness reaction with the material". Thus, improving the social public consciousness of environmental protection and popularizing environment science knowledge will greatly promote the development of environmental protection in China.