The Predicament And Perfection Of The Preventive Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation System

Environmental risks have a high degree of complexity and scientific uncertainty.Once the environmental pollution and ecological damage caused by them occurs,the harm results will be serious and irreversible.Compared with general post-event relief environmental civil public interest litigation,preventive environmental civil public interest litigation with prevention as the purpose and function can better prevent and control risks and avoid the occurrence of actual environmental damage.In view of this,my country has not only established the precautionary principle in the environmental protection law,but also stipulated the provisions of preventive public interest litigation in judicial interpretations,authorizing eligible subjects to choose the form of public interest litigation,and "pollute the environment and destroy the ecology.A significant risk to the public interest".However,through searching,it can be found that the operating status of the system is not satisfactory,and there are only a handful of related cases.Combining the existing legal provisions of the system,this paper selects three typical cases to study the dispute focus of both parties,the process of court trial and argumentation,and concludes my country’s preventive environmental civil public interest litigation system exists such as the legal provisions.Issues such as different application standards for the provisions of "major risks",single responsibility assumption and relief methods,the allocation of burden of proof and the standard of proof following the provisions of general relief environmental civil public interest litigation,and the lack of litigation incentives and disciplinary mechanisms have hindered its in-depth development.Based on the investigation and reference of relevant foreign systems,combined with work experience,this paper clarifies the identification subjects,paths and standards of "major risks" by synthesizing the ecological protection red line and the list of national key protected wild animals and plants,and refines them through enumeration.It is suggested that in the preventive environmental civil public interest litigation system,individual citizens can be defined as eligible subjects of prosecution,the transfer of the burden of proof shall be applied,and preventive protection measures should be considered in conjunction with injunctions.At the same time,it is also necessary to improve the litigation incentive and punishment mechanism in terms of reducing or exempting litigation costs.Therefore,it is different from the remedial environmental public interest litigation system,and promotes the in-depth development of my country’s environmental public interest litigation system.