Research On The Standing Of The Environmental Public Interest Litigation

Environmental pollution is getting serious increasingly as a consequence of economic development, which makes environmental problems a hot issue under world-wide common concern. That is to say, economic development improves people’s lives in many ways indeed, meanwhile, it causes enormous damage to human beings’ living environment. Given the circumstances, people begin to reflect on “Treatment after pollution”, a principle held by them while they pursued rapid economic development, and the consequences the principle has brought for them. How to legally solve the rights and interests of disputes caused by environmental pollution has become the hot issue of concern, with increasingly aggravating environmental pollution. Thus environmental public interest litigation emerges to meet the requirement, and the problem of environmental public interest litigation plaintiff qualification, then become the primary problem of the new lawsuit. It has become a trend currently to expand environmental public interest litigation plaintiff qualifications. Generally there are three frequently-adopted theories to support the trend, namely, the public trust theory, private attorney general theory,the theory of republicanism and environmental right. The four theories have undoubtedly contributed to the development and improvement of environmental public interest litigation plaintiff qualification, nevertheless, each of the three theories has its own deficiency.The current grim situation of environmental pollution, massive pollution problems emerge,the vast majority of issues relating to the environmental public interest is difficult to be effectively addressed, in practice the issue of environmental public interest litigation plaintiff’s difficult to define, the law on environmental public interest litigation plaintiff has no clearly defined. To solve this problem, April 24, 2014 the NPC Standing Committee voted through the "Environmental Protection Amendment Act", which is "Environmental Protection Law" was promulgated 25 years ago the first modification, the new law on January 1, 2015 implementation.Environmental charity organization Environmental Public Interest Litigation new "Environmental Protection Law" Article 58 gives qualified, such a requirement for China’s environmental public interest litigation is cross-age progress, Therefore, this paper, based on China’s civil procedure law, uses litigation right theory as the theoretical foundation to specifically identify that the procuratorial organs, the environmental protection administrative organs, public organizations and individual citizens all have the environmental public interest litigation plaintiff qualification, holding the spirit of the provisions of the environmental publicinterest litigation plaintiff in the amendment of new environmental protection law. In this way,this paper expects to benefit China’s law system concerning environment public welfare, so as to develop economy in a healthy way and to promote the realization of a harmonious society.