The Standing Of Plaintiff In Environmental Public Interest Litigations

Starting from the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the international community paid more attention on environmental protection, environmental rights and environmental justice. The relationship between environmental rights and human rights is also vital in discussion. This dissertation argues that, more studies should be carried on environmental procedural rights instead of environmental substantive rights. Environmental Public Interest Litigations functions as remedies to diffuse damages caused to the general public by environmental disruptions. The important mechanism thereof is the standing issue. As a theory in the field of political science, the public trust doctrine traced back to Rome Law. Recently it has been introduced into International Environmental Law. According to Joseph Sax, the scope of the public trust should be extended to the whole environment. In the public trust relationship, the government as trustee is under fiduciary obligations to protect the interest of the public. The obligations should involve environmental regulation and enforcement. When the fiduciary obligations are breached, whether through action or omission, the government is considered liable. The public should thus be granted the right to seek remedies through litigations. When the environmental disruption is caused by a third party, due to the omission of the government, both of them are liable and could be sued.After the introduction of public interest doctrine as the foundation of my argument, Environmental Public Interest Litigations in the four chosen countries will be studied.In the US, EPILs are also called citizen suits under provisions of environmental statutes. Both violators and administrators can be sued. In order to have standing, the plaintiff should at least prove injury-in-fact. The interpretation of injury-in-fact has gone through transition from concrete injuries to a broader mode in order to make citizen suits function better.The standing of plaintiff in EPILs in Germany is much restricted. First of all, defendants are only government authorities. Second, only recognized organizations are permitted to sue EPILs. Finally, plaintiffs should prove that individual rights have been violated. Under these requirements, the standing issue is an obstacle for the public to file EPILs and is not in conformity with Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention. The amendment of the Environmental Appeals Act in 2013 removed the requirement of proving "individual right" infringed, which relaxed the standing requirements to some extent.PILs in India emerged under the movement of judicial activism in the late 1970s and carry distinct features. As part of PILs, EPILs in India do not put too many restrictions on the standing issue. Defendants are normally government authorities. Private violators can only be positioned as co-defendants. Epistolary jurisdiction also makes EPILs easy to file, according to which even a letter addressed to the local court is considered valid. Under the Indian mode, there are potential risks of overloaded cases and lack of efficiency in the courts.EPILs in China have a shorter history, along with the construction of environmental courts at each level and the modification of Civil Procedure Law and Environmental Protection Law. Defendants can only be private violators and plaintiffs are restricted to eligible ENGOs. According to the public trust doctrine, it would be suggested that, a provision allowing government authorities to be sued in EPILs should be included in China’s future legislations.By demonstrating the differences in the four countries, this dissertation argues for recognized ENGOs as plaintiffs to file Environmental Public Interest Litigations in a combination of civil and administrative mode.