Legal Issues Of Public Participation In Environmental Impact Assessment

In recent years, with the rapid operation of economy, the problem of environmental issues becomes increasingly serious. The social events caused by environment happened frequently. The PX project is one of the most attentive events which senates the nation. From2007to2012, the PX project happened in Xiamen、 Dalian and Ningbo. Which the Series of environmental tragedy exposed is the closed of the environmental message and the inadequateness of the participation of public. As the fundamental institution of environmental protection, the public participation in environmental impact assessment laid the foundation for people to fully participate in the environmental decision. It makes people to fully understand the planning or construction projects. People can make accurate judgment to major potential environmental problems, in result, it ensures that each building or planning can be in accordance with the requirements of environmental protection. In this paper, the author will mainly introduce the legal issues of public participation in environmental impact assessment through four parts:In part one, the author introduces the overview of public participation in environmental impact assessment. In this part, the author mainly states the origin and evolution process and the necessity and value of environmental impact assessment.In part two, the author introduces the cases and problems of the environmental impact assessment in real lives. By describing the case of people’s environmental rights in Shenzhen and PX project in Xiamen, the author tries to reveal the system obstacles of environmental impact assessment, and to find the export of this system for the sounding the public participation in environmental impact assessment.In part three, the author introduces the legislation of public participation in environmental impact assessment. By analyzing the process of public participation in environmental impact assessment in USA and Japan, combining with the international treaty and the local rules on this system, the author raises the thinking of the legislation of public participation in environmental impact assessment. In the last part, combing with the present situation of our country, the author put forward the way to consummate the system of public participation in environmental impact assessment. It includes perfecting the body of public participation in environmental impact assessment; broadening the object of public participation in environmental impact assessment; perfecting the time of public participation in environmental impact assessment; making the process of public participation to proceed all the time and establishing the concrete system for the perfection of public participation in environmental assessment.The author hopes to study further about the legal issues of the perfection of public participation in environmental impact assessment by this paper, in order to improve the legal effect of public participation and play its proper function in the real lives.