A Study On The Improvement Of Government Environmental Information Disclosure System

Environmental information disclosure as a means of environmental governance is connected with public participation system and has caused widespread concern in the field of environmental protection. To make the public participated in environmental protection consciously, we must first fully disclose information. The implementation of the two normative documents--Regulations on Open Government Information and Environmental Information Disclosure (Trial) on May1,2008, indicated that China’s environmental information disclosure system has been initially established. To measure the quality of a system we can test the effectiveness according to the practice run situation. However, through government performance assessment and Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI index), our present government environmental information disclosure system has failed to achieve its original purpose. Information opened initiatively by government are mainly policies and regulations, or more than a few so-called "positive" messages, and application cases from the public are also very few,why a same system received good results abroad and helped manage the environment effectively while it is just a mere formality in our country? The reasons still need to be explored carefully.This article is divided into seven parts, except for introduction and conclusion, there are five parts left:The first part,starting with the concept of environmental information, discussing and distinguishing environmental information, environmental information disclosure and government environmental information disclosure system.The second part, deeply analyzing theoretical origins of this system from the perspective of law, political science and economics, introducing Public access to environmental information theory, Service-oriented government theory, Government environmental responsibility theory, Asymmetric information theory and Government Failure Theory respectively.The third part, throwing our vision to see the lateral approach to foreign governments, introducing environmental information disclosure legislation and specific legislative contents overview of U.S., UK and Japan separately and making comments on their worthy learning places.The fourth part, then back our vision to our country,looking at how government environmental information disclosure system operates in legislation and practice, taking Zhejiang Province as an example, through summarizing and sorting a lot of research data, introducing environmental information disclosure situation of Zhejiang Province in detail.The fifth part, according to the results of the analysis of our shortcomings, selectively absorbing the experience of foreign governments on environmental information disclosure system combined with China’s national conditions and conceiving further improvement for our own government environmental information disclosure system.