The U.s. Natural Resource Damage Compensation System

With the increasing frequency of the environment accident and the awakening of environmental awareness , more and more concern has been placed on the development of environment legislation.Having operational assessment regulations and recognizing and compensating the nonuse value are the most impressive traits in US environment law.This article attempts tO analyze the natural resource damages system in US law which will be elaborated in the following four parts:The first part will focus on the framework and legislative history of US environment law.The second part will elaborate on the current assessment procedure of natural resource damages which is really practical and operational.The third part attempts analyze the most characteristic part in the US environment law—compensation of nonuse value and its the appraisal method—contingent valuation.The last part will make comparison between US and China environment law in the aspect of natural resources damages with a view to putting forwa.rd legislative recommendations tO the natural resources damages in China environment law.This paper focuses on the natural resources damages in the environmental legislation,in particular,on the non—use of natural resources damages which are almost blank fields of study in domestic environment law.Non—use of natural resources damages in China has not been clearly identified even the support of the appraise system.We hope that this paper can play a role in promoting legislation for damages.