On The Company's Environmental Liability

Corporation,as the basic organizational form of modern enterprise, is playing an important role in modern society.In real life,the relationship between the corporation and the environment is extremely close.On the one hand,the corporation utilizes environmental resources to obtain high profits by their advanced technology,on the other hand the corporation is also a major consumer of natural resources and the main saboteurs of natural environment.Therefore,it is the unshirkable responsibility for corporations to deal with the current environmental crisis which human beings are bearing.In order to realize the harmony between human beings and natural environment,the corporation must take environmental responsibility,enhance their awareness of environmental protection and utilize the resources reasonably and take active measures to protect the environment.The subject of this paper,the corporate environmental legal liability,is essentially a narrow corporate environmental responsibility.Therefore,this paper begins with the basic principles of corporate environmental responsibilities.According to the severe environmental situation we're facing,the value of environmental resources and the symbiotic harmony between man and nature,this paper analyzes the reasons why the corporations should take the environmental responsibilities from practical and theoretical points.And then it illustrates the specific contents of corporate environmental legal liability to provide adequate theoretical support to the following research,which includes corporate environmental administrative liability,corporate environmental civil liability as well as corporate environmental criminal liability.The developed countries such as UK,US,Germany and Japan are the first industrialized countries in the world,where the environmental crisis emerges earlier than any other countries.So they are also the first countries to keep an eye on corporate environmental legal liability,and have achieved a lot in theory and accumulated rich practical experience. Through the comparative analysis about the practice of corporate environmental legal liability in the above-mentioned countries,we can find that though they have something in common,they still have some unique characteristics.Such as environmental performance reporting system in UK,daily penalty system and strict liability system in US,dangerous principle of punishment and environmental liability insurance system established in Germany,environment administration contract system and the system of guarantee funds in Japan.All of which are worthy our reference and study.The environmental problems which gradually emerged in developed countries in the process of industrialization have together arisen in our country.Unfortunately,because of the weakness of environmental awareness among corporations,the shortsightedness in corporation targeting,as well as the inadequacies in the environmental legislation and environmental law enforcement,there are several defects in the practice of corporate environmental legal liability in our country.The regulations about corporate environmental legal liability are dispersed scattered and haven't established a complete legal system.Additionally, the principles are too abstract and don't have a strong operability. After the analysis on the defects of our corporate environmental legal liability practice,this paper draws lessons from the legislative experience of advanced countries and comes up with some conceptions to improve the corporate environmental administrative liability,corporate environmental civil liability as well as corporate environmental criminal liability in our country.Finally,in order to further standardize the system of corporate environmental legal liability system,this paper makes four institutional designs,such as environmental credit rating system,environmental information disclosing system,public participation system and environmental liability insurance system.