Study Of Ecological Damage Tort Liability

Environmental pollution and ecological damage have become increasingly severe problems. The early environmental tort study mainly discusses the tort liability of environmental pollution, while for some reasons these studies could not solve the constant ecological damage tort cases recent years: ecological damage tort is a new tort that emerges recent years, which is different from general tort and environmental pollution tort, an example could be the over-mining causing the lowering of water table thus influence water use of production and daily life. As in real world, cases occur frequently that ecological damage causes other damage, the study of ecological damage tort becomes an essential issue. There are several laws and regulations focusing on environmental pollution tort in current legislation, though, most of them are regulations towards environmental pollution, hardy are there regulations focusing on ecological damage tort, let alone specific civil liability regulations. Also, even in these limited legal provisions, different provisions could be discordant or not uniformly applicable, thus fail to satisfy practical needs.This essay firstly gives clear definitions of some fundamental concepts including ecological damage tort from perspective of semantic analysis: ecological damage tort refers to a juristic fact in civil law that, because of production and operation needs, the actor exploits, utilizes and extort natural resource in improper ways, which exceeds the carrying capacity of environment and leads to imbalance of ecological system,thus causes damage to human life, property or threat of damage, and in accordance with the law, the actor shall bear all negative consequences.Meanwhile, comparative analysis is also used to analyze and compare with the general tort and environmental pollution tort,which highlights the distinct feature of ecological damage tort and lays theoretical base of concrete argument of ecological damage in following paragraphs. Secondly, various existing theories of the doctrine of liability fixation in ecological damage tort are summarized, compared, analyzed and commented, on which basis the argument is stated that no-fault liability is applicable to ecological damage tort liability, and the legitimacy of the former is analyzed.Based on this,this essay proposes that ecological damage tort along with environmental pollution tort should be included as content of environment tort and contained in the system of environmental tort. What is more, through comparing legislation and practical experience in China and abroad, and combining with inherent features of ecological damage tort, this essay states new theoretical rules of ecological damage tort liability, and reconstructs it, thus point out the ought-to-be situation of ecological damage tort liability in China, that apply no-fault liability to it in terms of doctrines of liability; in case of constitutive requirements of liability, illegality element is excluded, and it highlights three elements: acts of ecological damage tort, damage to human life, property or threat of damage, causal relationship between the former two elements. With three of above ecological damage tort liability could be established. In the identification of causal relationship, theoretical achievements home and abroad are used as reference, and diversified identification methods are used for different kinds of ecological damage; as for liability, the original limited undertaking pattern should be expanded, civil sanction and punitive damage are supposed to be introduced to compensate the insufficiency and narrowness of original liability. Meanwhile, the exemptions should be limited. Strict conditions should be made to limit and differentiate force majeure and the fault of the injured, and should not be regarded as reasons for liability exemption. At last, defects of current legal system in ecological damage tort relief are analyzed, and focusing on these problems, concrete suggestions to perfect and modify ecological damage tort liability legislation of our country have been made from the perspective of tort law. Will introduce the rules for ecological damage infringement to rebuild the environment tort liability and the environment pollution tort to fusion, in the chapter on the environmental tort liability of tort for sound integrity system and regulations.Theoretically, this essay constructs a relatively integrated system of responsibility determination and prosecution for ecological damage tort, so as to solve the increasingly severe problem of ecological damage tort in our country by providing relative theoretical base and legislative support, and to provide clear reason for judicial office in the trial of similar cases in juridical practice, end the amorphous state of ecological damage tort, unify the judgment of judicial office, avoid different or opposite judgment for similar cases, and improve the sustainable development of ecological environment, maintain social justice and fairness, promote social progress and development.