Study Of Corporate Environmental Liability

The environmental problem has been becoming increasingly the worldwide matter of common concern since the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century.The people have realized fully: The corporations are the main responsible parties for pollution of the environment. At the present time when the sustainable development and the construction of harmonious society are emphasized, how to carry on the legal restraint to the responsibilities of corporation has become the important topic for the current legislation and the practice in our country. Although it has already been involved in the domestic studies, more of them are to collect and tidy the foreign documentation rather than to analyze correspondingly the actual environmental responsibilities of China's corporation. Thus, hereunder we relatively focus on the gap between the status quo of the environmental responsibilities of China's corporation and what ought to be of the environmental responsibilities of China's corporation, and put forward a trial rationalization proposal for consummation of this legal regulation.This paper consists of four parts.The first part is the basic theory of the corporate legal responsibility for environment. This part starts from defining the connotation of the corporate legal responsibility for environment, and analyzes the forming and starting of the corporate environmental responsibility, thus reveals that the corporate environmental responsibility is the reasonable extension to the corporate social responsibility. The corporate environmental responsibility includes the corporate legal responsibility for environment and the corporate moral responsibility for environment, this paper takes the corporate legal responsibility for environment as the object of study, which includes specifically the corporate executive legal responsibility for environment, the corporate civil legal responsibility for environment and the corporate criminal legal responsibility for environment. Subsequently, it discusses the theoretic bases for the corporations to bear the environmental responsibilities, which are the corporate social responsibility theory, the external theory of the corporate environmental responsibility and the ethic base for the corporate environmental responsibility. It from different standpoints analyzes the inevitability and feasibility for the corporations to bear the environmental legal responsibilities, providing sufficient theoretic support for that the corporations should bear the legal responsibility for environment.The second part is the comparative investigation upon the environmental legal responsibility regulations for the foreign corporations. Through the investigation upon the corporate legal responsibility regulation for environment of the developed countries and of the developing countries, it points out that the corporate legal responsibility regulations for environment of various countries not only have something in common, but also have their own features. Especially such developed countries as USA, Japan and Germany, thanks to the earlier occurrence of environmental problem, have accumulated much experience that is worth learning and using for reference in respect of environmental protection, pollution control and regulation of the corporate environmental behavior.The third part is the statement of the status quo of the corporations in our country to bear the environmental legal responsibilities. It points out that there are some deficiencies of the corporations in our country in respect to legislation and practice regarding the bearing of environmental responsibilities. And then it specifies three causes of formulation of such deficiencies: First, the improvidence of the corporation in course of target-setting under the traditional economic mode; Second, the unscientificity of the operating cost accounting; Third, the limitation of the environmental law governing mode of our country.The fourth part is the thought of consummation of the corporate legal responsibility for environment of our country. Based on the above-mentioned reasons, this part attempts to construct the corporate legal responsibility system for environment under the mode of circular economy guided by the scientific view of development. Firstly, the design of several regulations has been conducted for further regulating the corporate environmental responsibility, they are: environmental information disclosing regulation, environmental accounting regulation, producer responsibility extending regulation and corporate green purchasing regulation. Subsequently, it puts forward a thought of consummating the environmental legal responsibilities of the corporations in our country, including the corporate civil legal responsibility for environment, the corporate executive legal responsibility for environment and the corporate criminal legal responsibility for environment.