Research On Civil Relief System For Environmental Torts In China

Environmental pollution and ecological damage can’t be caused in a short period, which are the result of long-term unreasonable development and exploitation of environmental resources and blind pursuit of economic benefits. Nowadays, people become aware of the situation that economic development and scientific and technological progresses bring about not only huge conveniences but also extremely urgent environmental crisis. Because of people’s increased awareness of environmental protection, there are an increasing number of conflicts and disputes caused by environmental torts. However, due to China’s incomplete legal system, difficulty in relief became a serious social issue. Civil relief for environmental torts serves as the most fundamental relief approach among many relief approaches, for which as ways of assuming liabilities, compensation for damages can compensate for losses of victims effectively and injunction can prevent environmental torts from happening again in an effective way. Therefore, civil relief system for environmental torts is selected by me as the object of the research.At present, theories and practices of China’s civil relief system for environmental torts need to be improved in some aspects, such as legislative defects in fundamental environmental rights, non-unified identification system for causal relationship, simple relief methods, immature public interest litigation system, etc. Reasons for existence of such problems include the perfunctory attitude of traditional laws toward environmental issues characterized by failure of seeking both temporary and permanent solutions, non-existence of a scientific development view, which result in the situation that victims trust in the petition system instead of laws and would rather safeguard their rights through approaches other than litigation. Through years of development, civil relief systems for environmental torts in other countries are relatively complete at present, especially aspects such as public interest litigations involving environmental issues, presumption of causal relationship and way of assuming civil liabilities. However, because of different traditions of legal systems and situations, there are still defects in environmental legislations of developed countries, which should be compared and summarized for distinction and reference. People’s production and business operation activities can promote economic and cultural development and thus enrich their material and spiritual life. However, care for ecological environment is ignored in the process. As for civil relief for environmental torts, the principle of coordination between environmental protection and sustainable economic and social development must be adhered to. On this basis, with consideration of problems existing in the abovementioned civil relief system and legislative and judicial practices in China, some suggestions are put forward in this paper, including clarification of environmental rights, unification of identification criteria for causal relationship, improvement of civil relief methods and improvement of litigation system for public interests, through which it is hoped that humble efforts may be made to China’s environmental protection.