Insufficiency And Perfection Of Chinese Environmental Legislation

With the progress of society, the industrialization process as well as science and technology has undergone through rapid development. While creating a huge amount of material wealth, there has been great destruction to the ecological environment. Problems like the global warming, ozone hole, water crisis, acid rain, dropped forest resources, desertification, energy shortages, garbage disaster, toxic chemical spills and species extinction have become increasingly prominent. They have not only damaged the ecological environment, but posed a serious threat to human life and health. Counts of bloody incidents were shocking to the sight and shuddering to the heart, that they are nothing less than the disastrous consequences of war. In the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, though every nation and party have the wish to protect the environment, but they failed to draft a legal-binding document due to economic interests. Nowadays, environmental protection has become a task that troubled every country in the world which calls for imminent action of protection. Countries should set aside their prejudices by promoting communication and cooperation in order to preserve our mutual home.Currently, many countries are very much concerned with the protection of the environment and they have taken measures to protect the environment through criminal legislation by means of laws and regulations. China is also constantly exploring the way to improve environmental protection legislation so as to protect the environment better. In 1997, China’s put together environment related crimes and set up a special section of the "destruction of environmental resources crime", so as to highlight the protection of the environment, and thereafter in the form of an amendment ("Criminal Law Amendment (b)", "Criminal Law Amendment (d)" and "Criminal Law Amendment (h)"). Having gone through modification and improvement, new charges were adopted to accommodate for emerging environmental crimes, which reflects the scientific and advanced aspects of the development of China’s Criminal Law. In addition, the CPC Central Committee attached great importance to environmental issues, the Seventeenth Party Congress put ecological civilization in the report for the first time, thus giving prominence to the construction of ecological civilization and material civilization, political civilization and spiritual civilization, which reflects the will to implement the scientific concept of development, taking the road of sustainable development. It is the idea of building a harmonious society that sublimates to ecological and economic aspects, as well as one of the important requirements of building a moderately prosperous society. The Eighteenth Party Congress re-emphasized the importance of the ecological environment by giving the construction of ecological civilization into a prominent position, and made a goal of building a "Beautiful China" which called on people to cherish the nature, to actively participating in ecological protection, thus highlighting the nation’s responsibility to the world and its decesdents. Recently held Fifth Plenary Session of Eighteenth Party Congress wrote the construction of ecological civilization to the "Thirteenth Five Year Plan". It reflects our commitment to green development and confidence to build a resource-saving and environment-friendly society. It is clear that China has been struggling to the protection of our environment.Although China’s Criminal Law include some provisions on environmental crime, but still not comprehensive and flawed. Under the new circumstances to protect the environment, we should actively seek legislative changes and breakthroughs to establish a harmonious relationship between man and nature. Through the analysis of current situation of environment crime. We could identify the shortcomings and deficiencies, and to learn and absorb the world’s successful experience. Combined with the concrete practice, we could promote the improvement of environmental crime legislation.This thesis includes six parts:introduction, body and conclusion. First, the introduction describes the background and significance of the study of environmental crime, research status, research ideas and methods and research priorities, difficulties and shortcomings, the environmental problems of crime are briefly described. Secondly, the body is divided into four parts in detail, the first part is the basic theory describing the environmental crime, including the concept of environmental crime, features, and constitutes. The second part analyzes the evolution and progress of legislation of environmental crime, and points out the deficiencies in concept of environmental crime, legislation models, charge system, the constitution of crime, punishment and lack of applications. Part three reviews the environmental legislation civil law and common law to Germany, Japan, Britain, the United States. Through contrasts with the Continental common law and European law, we draw the implications of China’s environmental law legislation. The fourth part is the core of this paper, it is a detailed account by changing the focus of legislative principles and practices, and the integration of additional charges of environmental crime, improvements of the constitution of crime, giving full play to the role of criminal fines, establishing the status of Qualification Penalty, development and criminal law measures supporting non-punitive measures, adding severe environmental crimes, the introduction of a strict liability regime and moderate environmental crime responsibility principle of the presumption of legal and other ways to improve our environmental crime legislation. Finally, the conclusion of the article is the general summary and presentation of crime legislation and the environmental outlook and vision. The author is confident with the future of environmental crime legislation.