On Strengthening Governmental Responsibility For Environmental Risk Prevention

With the progress of modernization, China’s economic development has entereda stage of steady growth, people’s life are getting better. Economic development hasled to the environmental crisis as the same time. Many serious environmentalpollution accidents occurred in the country in recent years. These accidents havecaused tremendous damage to the environment, and they are serious harm to people’slife and health. In this case, people began to care about the topic of environmentalprotection. How to resist the environmental risks brought about by the economicdevelopment has become an intractable problem.It has become a social consensus that government has responsibility to protectthe environment. Government also has responsibility to prevent and controlenvironmental risk, but this responsibility has not been written to the law. AmongChina’s environmental risk prevention laws, there are many provisions ongovernment power, but the provisions of the legal responsibility rarely. In practice,the government often does not fulfill the responsibility of environment riskprevention. Government is failed in the prevention of environmental risk, and thatmakes people begin to doubt the ability and credibility of the government.Government’s incompetence makes it unable to achieve the purpose of environmentalprotection, thus restrict the building of a harmonious society in China and the processof sustainable development. By proposing some problems in government’s work, thisarticle aims to identify the causes and try to find a good way to solve these problems.The article shows the conception and the content of environmental risk. Then, Idiscussed the meaning of government’s environmental responsibility, and pointed outthat the government has responsibility to prevent the environmental risk.In this article, I intent to find the theory basis for government’s responsibility onenvironmental risk prevention. The first part is the social contract theory. The articledescribed the content of the social contract theory, starting from the view of thepublic interest, and discusses the need for the government’s commitment to environmental risk liability. The second part is about the theory of distributive justice.In this part, I introduce the content and principles of distributive justice, and then usethese principles to allocate environmental risk responsibility to draw the governmentshould assume important responsibilities in the prevention and control ofenvironmental risks. The third part is the theory of environmental rights. Bydemonstrating the legitimacy of environmental rights, the article shows theimportance of government’s responsibility on environmental risk prevention.Then I introduce the current situation of the government’s responsibility, and tryto explore the reasons for the lack of government responsibility. In my opinion, thelack of awareness of risk prevention, chasing their own interests and imperfect ofaccountability mechanisms make government do not perform their duties.Finally, this article focused on the reasons for the lack of responsibility ofgovernment, and put forward countermeasures to strengthen the government’sresponsibility of the prevention and control of environmental risks. Thesecountermeasures include strengthening legislation, improving law enforcement andimprove the accountability mechanism.