Review On Environmental Public Interest Litigation

In China, environmental issues first appeared many years ago and became increasingly worse than before. Therefore, establishment of environmental public interest litigation system has become a consensus. Due to uncompleted relevant legal system, there exist disputes regarding many issues on environmental public interest litigation such as qualification of plaintiff, scope of litigation, identification of causality and so on. Environmental public interest litigation always encountered some predicaments such as that it was difficult to file a case and authenticate. Due to small amount of environmental public interest litigation cases, they couldn’t play the role of protecting the environmental public interest. These disputes in environmental public interest litigation were primarily identified with the latest-modified Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China(hereinafter referred to as Environmental Protection Law) and the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court of Several Issues on the Application of Law in the Trial of Environmental Civil Public Interest Lawsuits(hereinafter referred to as the Interpretation). The case of ecological damage in Nanping(hereinafter referred to as the case) is the first environmental public interest litigation case since the Environmental Protection Law and Interpretation on effect. The case was prosecuted by eligible environmental organizations against the ecological damage behavior. Against the background, the case serves significant reference for environmental public interest litigation in China.Specifically, the case is taken as the starting point in this paper, in which analysis on legal issues starting with the focuses of disputes is conducted. The first part is illustrated by the case and combs and summarizes the focuses. The second part discusses the qualifications of subjects as plaintiff recognized in environmental public interest litigation one by one, and illustrates relevant stipulations in current laws of China while the imperfect aspects of current law are pointed out. The third part clarifies the nature of environmental public interest litigation, including the foundation of rights, scope of litigation, differences from environmental tort litigation, ways of liabilities of environmental public interest litigation. The forth part illustrates the burden of proof. The conclusion that the causality between environmental tort and damage shall apply the reversion of burden of proof is made through analyzing relevant articles and value measurement. Aiming at high litigation costs and proof pressure, these systems which include expert assessor system, litigation support system, litigation costs deferment system, forensic fees, expert consultation fees and other reasonable fees paid by the defendant environmental charitable fund, shall be introduced to share litigation costs and ease litigation burden on the plaintiff.In this paper, focuses of disputes in the case serve as the starting points; from which disputes in environmental public interest litigation is clarified through analyzing the applications of relevant articles in Environmental Protection Law and Interpretation. By studying and discussing the case, the author looks forward to provide experiences and references to relevant litigations, judgments and application of law in the future.