Legal Countermeasures Of Environmental Disputes To Administrative Mediation In China

As a strong driving force, China’s reform and opening up Policies promote developments of economy and technology, and people’s life is better. However, the environment problem is increasingly worse. Many hazy days have been seen in China in this year. Blue and yellow foggy alerts have been issued by the Central Meteorological Observatory several times. Some provinces regard ’fresh air for people’as one of the biggest livelihood projects. All these issues indicate that the environment problem is too serious to hinder social and economic developments.In recent years, many social contradictions are caused by environment problems. The contradictions which are dealt with inefficiently lead to many group incidents, like ’Qigong issue’,’Shifang issue’ and ’Ningbo issue’. One widely used method to resolve environment disputes is a judicial litigation system. However, the procedure is so strict and time-costing that it is the last way to solve the environment cases for the aggrieved parties due to different social and financial positions between both parties. As supervision and a law forcement agency, the government resolves environment disputes more effectively taking full advantage of its statutory duty and expertise rather than enforced mediation. Thus, low-cost, high-efficiency and dialogue rather than confrontation are significant factors for the government to solve environment issues.The administrative mediation of environment disputes in China starts late and develops slowly. The imperfect mechanism with problems of perception, legislation, institution setting, personnel allocation, procedure and supporting measures, should be improved as soon as possible. It is a huge test for the government to balance public interests and personal interests, implement corporate responsibilities, compensate public loss and maintain social harmony. The improved administrative mediation of environment disputes in China is not only accessible to construct ecology civilization, promote the coordinated ecological environment protection and social-economic development, but accessible to enhance the efficiency of law enforcement, save costs and maintain social harmony.The paper firstly reviews literature of environment disputes both in China and abroad, and proposes the theoretical and practical significance of this paper. Based on these, it demonstrates features and problems of the mechanism of the administrative mediation of environment disputes. Secondly, it analyzes strength, weakness and problems in the administrative mediation of environment disputes, and puts forward the necessity and feasibility of implementation of the administration mediation. Thirdly, combining with domestic and international advanced experience, legal countermeasures are proposed to enhance the administration mediation of environment disputes in terms of principles, force of agreement, institutions, personnel, procedure and system of mediation, supervision and supporting measures in the fifth part.