Legal Protection Of The Citizen’s Right To Know Environmental Information In China

Following rapid economic development and social advance, the citizens awareness of environmental protection is gradually enhanced. At the same time, the requirements for environmental information disclosure are more demanding than ever before. In fact, environmental information disclosure is the foundation of the other citizens rights as well as the significant content of the environmental right to know. Guaranteeing the public’s environmental right to know is the inevitable requirement for building a law governed country. However, owing to the imperfect system of China, public’s environmental right to know is often difficult to realize. Recent years, a series of case concerning environmental information disclosure that took place in our country have shown that continuously perfecting the legal system of public’environmental right to know as well as seriously carrying out it is a basic approach to ensure citizen environmental right to know. On the basis of this, this paper, starting from a case with respect to environmental information disclosure, gives an research on the legal protection to Chinese environmental right to know.This paper consists of four parts. The first part, introduces the concept and nature of environmental right to know. What’s more, the system evolution of environmental right to know is also presented in this part. The second part addresses the basic experiences of legal protection to public’s environmental right to know in developed countries and regions. By means of analyzing and comparing the legal systems and protection practices among EU, America, Japan and so on, this part sums up some enlightenments for our country, which includes recognizing citizens environmental right to know, expanding the subjects of rights and obligations, perfecting supervision and relief system an so on. In the third part, the paper discusses the current situation and existing problems relating to public’s environmental right to know in China from legislative and practical level. Meanwhile, it points out the existing drawbacks in present legislation and practice, such as having no confirmed environmental right to know, imperfect information disclosure procedures and methods, unsounded relief system and so forth. The last part, in light of the reality of China along with useful foreign experiences, put forwards proposals for enhancing the legal protection concerning public’s environmental right to know. And the paper suggests that China should define legal orientation of citizens environmental right to know and perfect the corresponding legislative system of it. In addition, establishing supervision and accountability mechanism as well as widening rights remedy approach concerning right to know are also in dispensable.