Collective Action Dilemma Of Environmental Public Interest Litigation And Its Overcoming

From the point of view of environmental public interest litigation, the nature of public goods is a collective action to provide public goods. China's environmental public interest litigation is facing a "zero case rate" dilemma, it is the collective action in the field of environmental protection vivid reproduction. The theory of collective action that, in the absence of compulsory or selective excitation of the case, the members of the collective will be idle to take collective action to enhance public products but the choice of "free rider", which leads to the dilemma of collective action. At present, our country has not set up a sound environmental public interest litigation system, leading to environmental public interest litigation in many areas are still at the exploratory stage. The existing legal system although began pay attention to collective action plight of environmental public interest litigation, plaintiff qualification from the subject of private environmental organizations to expand the public power and procuratorial organs, and is now trying to reduce litigation costs to improve environmental organizations to participate in environmental public interest litigation, but because of the lack of motivation and the lack of procuratorial organs of the force, environmental public interest litigation potential plaintiffs lazy to participate in environmental public interest litigation, the situation has not improved. Therefore, to solve the problem of collective action in the environmental public interest litigation in China, it is necessary to design an artificial system to increase the selective incentive of the private subjects and to force the public authorities to perform their duties in environmental public interest litigation. This paper is based on the "zero case" of environmental public interest litigation in our country, and analyzes the problems of collective action, and the defects of the current legal system, and puts forward suggestions to solve the problem of collective action. This paper is divided into five parts except the introduction.In the first part, the problem of collective action is a kind of universal social phenomenon. In the course of the action of the group, the conflict between individual reason and collective reason leads to the dilemma of collective action.The second part, is about the causes of the collective action dilemma of environmental public interest litigation, the public product attribute is the theoretical basis of environmental public interest action, the "zero case rate" is the reality of environmental public interest litigation.The third part, the review of existing provisions of the incentive mechanism of China's environmental public interest litigation and. New civil procedure law and judicial interpretation provisions of the environmental public interest lawsuit against the party shall bear the cost of including in Lawyers' fees, appraisal fees, and other necessary expenses, breaks through the traditional private interest litigation in the losing party bear only trial cost range. This mode of action in a certain extent reduced the burden on the plaintiff. However, the implementation of the not with meager lawsuit benefit not fundamentally solve the plaintiff of the high litigation costs concerns.In the fourth part, environmental public interest litigation dilemma of collective action of the extraterritorial investigation. "Shall be borne by the losing party" rules, "bounty hunter" system, legal aid system, litigation system of insurance is the main legal systems of western countries in response to environmental public interest litigation collective action dilemma. The common feature is to seize the potential environmental public interest litigation the plaintiff's attribute to "the economic man", by selective incentive ways to improve environmental public interest litigation plaintiff in environmental public interest litigation enthusiasm. However, each country's situation is different, some system does not apply in China.The fifth part is the main body of environmental public interest litigation in our country. Because of the nature and legal status of public interest litigation, we have to build a special public interest litigation fund to improve environmental protection organizations to participate in environmental public interest litigation.