A Comparative Study Of Public Participation On The Environmental Impact Assessment Legal System Between Chinese And American

As an important tool for national environmental management, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) has became an effective measure coordinating economic development and ecological protection. As one of the most important principles of EIA—Public Participation can not only embody the environmental justice and equity, but also can be used to improve the correctness and acceptability of government environmental decisions.The United States is the first country to establish the EIA legal system in the world.Since the National Environment Protection Authority passed in the 1960s,this system was quickly adopted by the worldwide; many countries have established a set of public participation of environmental impact assessment legal system.Despite our country started late on this filed, but China is making rapid progress. Since 2002, "Environmental Impact Assessment Law",regarded the public participation of EIA as an important part of its legal system, until 2014, the NPC of China has changed the"Environmental Protection Laws", they especially set up one chapter which called"Environmental Information Disclosure and Public Participation" to ensure the public's right to know, participate, express and supervise. And it also stipulated the participatory process. Compared with the United Stated, China still has some deficiencies. So through the comparative method,this thesis makes a comparative research on the subject and the method of public participation, and also focus on the comparison of information publicity system on the EIA between China and the U.S.A. After comparing, this thesis analyzes the problems and obstacles such as the uncertainty scope of subject, neglect the Environmental Protection NGOs, and proposes the solutions to perfect the public hearing system, and improve the Environmental Information Disclosure System.