Environmental Liability Insurance Mode Selection In China

For long time,there are many environmental accidents which cause huge lost,and the victims can hardly be remedied.By this situation, Ministry of Environmental Protection and China Insurance Regulatory Commission started plans to build up the system of environmental liability insurance in order to have the environmental risks shared.Before this,what mode of the environmental liability insurance shall be used is the first question need consideration.There are generally two modes,one is voluntary insurance,and the other is compulsory insurance.Both of them have solid theory support,while either is not perfect in practice.The modes applied in countries who have built environmental liability insurance also show diversity.Theoretically,the decisive factor for the mode selection is the environmental reliability risk that the enterprises are facing.This risk involves the co-effect of general environmental risks,legal culture in different counties and also the judicial rigidness.Hereinto,the different rulers in counties for the ascription and protective scope in environmental tort system,and the tort liability scope in public environment are the most significant ones.It can be seen that different counties had the different first time choice based on different legal systems and environmental liability risks,while later when environmental legal system developed,no one insists to have the sheer voluntary or compulsory insurance,but to give special regulates for exception in a main tone so that to make the advantages from both modes get complementary for each other.Take the successful experience from other countries as reference;the conclusion is China shall build up a combined system which means compulsory system for high risk industries and voluntary system for other common risk industries with some taxation as complement.