On Public Participation System In The Environmental Law

Recently, the public participation in environmental protection has grown into a universal trend in the world. However, as to our country, the public awareness of taking an active part in protecting our environment is comparatively low, which is partly caused by the flaw and weakness concerning this point in the Environmental Law. Nowadays, the mass media' s attention has been drawn to the conference on the leaking-proof engineering of the relics of Winter Palace, organized by China Environment Protection Department. The issue arouses the public concern about our citizen' s role in environmental protection. The original concern of the paper is to figure out the way of founding and perfecting our policy and law about citizen' s role in protecting the environment, and therefore strengthen the public consciousness to act.The paper, whose theme is the public participation, is composed of three parts.The first part dwells on the general principles and value of public participation; analyzes its meaning, main body, coverage, content, procedures and principles, and the way and means of how to take part in; portrays clearly its tendency in the world.In the second part, an introduction of the legislative achievement in the western developed nations and related policy about public participation in international law provides a model to perfect our law.As to the third part, through the analysis of our nation' s legislative situation regarding public participation in environmental protection, especially through that of typical case study, the paper points out the problem existing in our public participation law and offers specific and feasible suggestion as to how to perfect it.The originalities of the paper are as follows: firstly, it enrichesthe meaning of public participation. Second, it systematically evaluates its principles in our environmental protection law. Third, the author, from the particular point of view of a skeleton environmentalist, points out the problem about the issue in our country. Fourthly, based on the findings of analysis and drawn on the experience from foreign countries about the legislation of public participation in environmental law, advice about systematically perfecting our law is given, which involves the frame of the law system, the route and the procedure and rules, the whole mechanism enabling the public to act.