The Environmental Protection Function Of Property Rights

Environment is the basis of human survival and development. With the development of society, have become a dilemma to break and. human beings began to engaged in activities of solving the environmental issues. In our country, because of the prevalent culture of long-term public authority, the solution of environmental problems is mainly dependent on the administrative means, which not only having no effect, but also bring a great deal of administrative costs.With the development of society, the concept of environmental protection began to have some breakthroughs, and the "private" settlement mechanism of environmental protection began to being received, but it also received the constraints of corresponding theories, that the property rights of freedom had led to the environmental problems, so we should not use this way to protect the environment. But it is worthy to be noticed that the freedom of property rights is only a cause of environmental problems but not the main reasons, and environmental protection have certain inherent and promote relation. So we should not deny the environment protection function of property rights. From the current realities, the environmental protection function of property rights have had a distinct manifestation in reality. First, the most important feature of environmental is sues is the external economy, but the biggest function of property rights is that this economy can be internalized to achieve environmental protection. In the protection of citizens’environmental rights, property rights also play a huge role in the environmental rights. But at present this right is just a proper rights, so it must to be transformed to the entity rights by property rights, to increase the public participation in environmental protection; third, in current situation, China’s environmental tort cases become more and more, but due to the long-term public authority, the costs of solution is high and relief rate is relatively low. To change this situation, it is necessary to strengthen the degree of relief of civil litigation basing on property rights.In the field of environmental protection, property rights play an important function, especially for the protection of water resources. The introduction of the2007"Property Law", that developed the property law system, has made important progress for the private protection of water resources, but we should see the system still has some shortcoming, there are still much space to perfect.Finally, in the demonstration of the environmental protection functions of property rights, we should recognize that now is a pluralistic era, the legal mechanisms to solve environmental problems should not be completely dependent on the regulation of public law or civil law, they should form a long-term mechanism with each other, to promote the solutions of environmental problems.