The Research On Environmental Liability Insurance Legal System Of China

In recent years, the environment pollution accidents happened frequency in thecountries with high-speed economic development and large-scale industrialization.Environmental pollution accident has the characteristics of diverse participation,indirect, long tail, complexity, the damage is often severe, the amount ofcompensation involved is enormous, it is difficult to fill the losses just by relying onthe strength of the relevant enterprise. In this kind of situation, more and morecountries began to adopt the environmental liability insurance system to regulate theenvironmental problems. From the perspective of the applicant, the insured enterprisewill pass on the huge environmental pollution accident liability through the insurancecontract, to enable enterprises to avoid the liability of paying compensation forpollution damage. From the perspective of the underwriter, in order to reduce claimsspending and get profit, it’s necessary to supervise the production and operation of theinsurer, to urge insurance enterprises to take all kinds of measures to reduce theprobability of occurrence of environmental pollution accident, and so to reduce oreven eliminate environmental pollution accidents. Environmental liability insurancesystem for decentralized environmental risks, either for other companies to avoidpollution incidents which due to heavy losses or even bankruptcy, but also alleviatethe financial burden of the Government, is in line with the common interests ofvictims, businesses and the Government. At present, China has not yet established acomplete system of environmental liability insurance system, and only part of theprovisions of the laws showed this, due to the high rate of environmental liabilityinsurance and the low rate of compensation, the development is very slow. Faced withthis situation, China should be based on their national conditions, and on active learning the successful experience of other countries, to establish a system ofcomplete environmental liability insurance as soon as possible. Chinese economicdevelopment was he linear model of the”three high and one low”(high extraction,high consumption, high emission, low use), the environment infringement behaviorreflect the characteristics of sustainable, so we should combine the form of mandatoryliability insurance and the willfully liability insurance. In practical terms, compulsoryliability insurance is model-based, supplemented by willfully liability insurance. Theformation of the insurer should be based on national conditions of China, drawing onthe successful experience of other countries, give full consideration to the actualsituation and different industries environmental violations, frequency of differentindustry environmental tort events, undertake by different insurance agencies. China’scurrent environmental liability insurance only see the civil liability caused bypollution accident as the subject matter insured. It can be seen from the practice, thiscoverage is too narrow, resulting in lacking of enthusiasm of relevant enterprises.Therefore, it is necessary to expand this coverage. The developing space ofenvironmental liability insurance in China is very large, the prospects is very broad.along with the improvement of relevant law, environmental liability insurance willbecome an important pillar of the insurance industry.