The Definition Of Social Public Interest Damaged By Environmental Pollution In China Recent Legislation

Environmental pollution can cause damage to the interests of the environment, as well as damage to personal and property interests of people. These two interests are different in nature, the former is the public, which is the public benefit. For personal and property damage to the interests of people called environmental tort. Environmental tort is different from environmental violations, environmental violations includes all damage caused by pollution of the environment. In practice, environmental interests can not be effectively protected, in most cases. Environmental benefits belongs to the human community, not divided into individual interests. Purely environmental public interest litigation system can help us to achieve the goal of the protection of environmental benefits. Civil Law implemented in January 2013and Environmental Protection Law implemented in January 2015stipulates:"the people who pollute the environment, harming the social public interests......". Many scholars believe that the two laws are the legal basis of the environmental public interest litigation. By literal interpretation and the understanding and discussion of related pieces of content law theory, we can not determine that the social public interest damaged by environmental pollution equal to the "public interest" in the environmental public interest litigation. The nature of the social public interest damaged by environmental pollution is the personal and property interests of many people. The failure of distinguish the public interest and social public interest lead to the error understanding of environmental public interest litigation. The concept of nature in nature is public. We can remove "public interest " in the environmental public interest litigation. This view can be supported by criminal litigation. In addition to the private prosecution, criminal litigation is public interest litigation. But criminal litigation is not expressed criminal public interest litigation. The removal of the public interest can not change the nature of litigation. In dealing with issues of personal and property interests of the environment, we can refer to the incidental civil action in criminal litigation.