A Comparative Study Of Environmental Impact Assessment Legal System In UK And China

Since environmental impact assessment system was officially legislated in America, environmental impact assessment has existed in the world for over 40 years. Although its development status varies from country to country, its prominent effects on preventing environmental pollution have been generally recognized by all countries. The premise and framework for effective implementation of environmental impact assessment system must abide by legal conventions. As a result, laws and regulations of environmental impact assessment are the most essential guarantees for the system. The institutional construction and legislation of environmental impact assessment in China is launched later than that in Occident; the practical experience and laws and regulations are not rich in both quantity and quality. Due to the key role of environmental assessment system in future environmental protection and global sustainable development concept, the environmental assessment development, especially legislative guarantee, in China has to use those developed countries' practice for reference to enrich and perfect the laws and regulations on environmental assessment system in China. Only when environmental assessment is carried out better, the goal of integrating environment protection with economic development can be achieved finally. This paper selects Britain as a comparison. As the country carried out the assessment quite early in European Union, Britain has rich experience in the aspect; meanwhile, it is the origin of Anglo-American law system on legislative system and legal system. As a result, by comparing Chinese and British laws and regulations on environmental assessment system in this paper, the author hopes to find out China's deficiencies in legislation, to learn global advanced environmental assessment concept and development direction, so that China's legislation on environmental assessment can be perfected for better implementation of environmental impact assessment system and protection of environment.By consulting, analyzing and summarizing numerous literature, this paper starts from the theory of environmental impact assessment and summarizes features of the system of two countries on the basis of their legislation history of environmental impact assessment system, legislative background and laws and regulations these contents. Particularly, the legal system of the assessment system in two countries, legal procedures for the assessment as well as objects and categories of environmental assessment are compared; future development direction of British environmental impact assessment is researched, to find out our differences in legislation by contrastive analysis. Through summary on research, the new trend of British environmental impact assessment legislation is traced. By combining the development of China's national situation, the author hopes to propose some constructive suggestions in this paper for completing China's environmental impact assessment system by a comparative analysis on the system in the two countries and lessons from Britain's advanced experience on legislation of environmental impact assessment.