Research On Administrative Relief System Of Public Participation In Environmental Impact Assessment In China

Environmental Impact Assessment System began to implement lately in our country. For the part of public participation among it, although the law had clear specification, it failed to meet the legislative intention without sufficient regulations, which were caused by amounts of factual or legal factors. For that matter, even if the public participation has been carried out in Environmental Impact Assessment according to relevant rules, there are still many deuterogenic problems related to it. Finding out the crux of these problems is needed to be addressed, and we should try to seek more perfect solutions. Contrasting with public participation and judicial intervention emphasized in western developed countries, EIA in our country focus more on government’s dominance, EIA matters monopolized by administrative power, and a series of laws and regulations in relation to the EIA are merely the basis of environmental administrative departments’ work. Therefore the validity of public participation in EIA is insufficient, whose most fundamental reason is the lack of oversight and control of administrative power, so that the rights of public participation have failed to get the respect they deserve. "No remedies, No rights", the government administrative organs have to provide a complete relief system if they want to guarantee the rights of public participation in EIA.Besides the introduction and conclusion,this article is divided into five chapters.The first chapter mainly analyzes the rights attribute of public participation in EIA, and this is the prerequisite question in this paper. Throughout argumentation, I have drawn a conclusion that the rights of public participation in EIA is a procedural rights of citizens.The second chapter mainly points out the the problems existing in the present relief situation of rights of public participation in our country’s EIA through analysis of typical cases.The problems are:the uneven relief channels, lagging remedy actions and insufficient relief capacity for public, and so on.The third chapter analyzes the reasons that the rights of public participation in EIA can not get the judicial relief from the aspects of theory and law. In my point of view, the traditional theory of administrative remedy and litigation rights, the environmental entity rights, and the lack of due process of law terms on our current constitution and some shortages in existing laws, all these factors resulted in the rights can not get relief.From the proceeding research of program behavior and conventional lawsuit theory, as the breakthrough point, the fourth chapter mainly proceeds some theoretical evidences that public participation rights in EIA should be given administrative remedy.The fifth chapter puts forward some advices on how to improve the relief system of public participation rights in EIA. First of all, the law and constitution need to explicitly give the rights of the public participation in Environmental Impact Assessment, and confirm that it is a type of legal right entitled by citizens from the nature and content. Secondly, the concept of judicial restraint which has been being upheld should be changed, and the judicial system should be further reformed. Moreover, on this basis, environmental administrative public interest litigation system which conforms to our actual situation needs to be established in our country.