The Dilemma And Way Out Of The Application Of Punitive Damages For Ecological And Environmental Infringement

In January 2022,the Supreme People’s Court promulgated the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of Punitive Damages to cases involving ecological and Environmental Infringement.Before the promulgation of the judicial interpretation,there had been constant disputes over the applicable conditions,compensation amount standard,compensation management rules and other issues of the punitive damages system applied to cases involving ecological and environmental infringement.No verdict has been reached.After the judicial interpretation was issued,it made unified provisions on the scope of application of punitive damages,the constituent elements,the base and multiple of the amount of compensation that are controversial in the punitive damages system in practice.It not only clarified the vague provisions in laws and regulations,solved the problems existing in practice and unified the standards,but also made a significant contribution to resolving the contradiction between economic development and ecological protection,promoting the sustainable development of economy and further promoting the construction of socialist ecological civilization.However,legislation always lags behind.In practice,in the application process of this judicial interpretation,how to deal with the unclear content and how to construct the supporting system of punitive damages in public interest litigation still have problems.These problems in practice are still worth discussing.It can be analyzed from the current legal norms that the punitive compensation system of ecological environmental infringement still has the following deficiencies: first,the scope of subjective constitutive elements is fuzzy.There has been a lot of discussion about the subjective elements of punitive damages system.Whether "gross negligence" should be included in the subjective elements of punitive damages system has been the focus of controversy."Gross negligence" should be included in the subjective elements of the ecological environmental tort punitive compensation system,expand the scope of subjective elements,and apply the punitive compensation system more flexibly.Second,the amount of punitive damages compensation rules are unclear.It is difficult to accurately calculate the ecological damage in the case of ecological environmental infringement.Therefore,even if the new judicial interpretation makes provisions on this matter,it is difficult to implement in practice due to the uncalculability of the base.Third,the procedure for deducting the amount of liability competition needs to be improved.The "Interpretation of the Application of Punitive Damages" only stipulates the sequence of liability concurrence in ecological environmental tort cases,and does not further specify the detailed rules of compensation amount deduction.In addition,while improving the above deficiencies,in order to better construct and apply the punitive compensation system,it should also improve its related supporting systems,such as labor compensation system,compensation amount management system and risk sharing system.The system of punitive compensation for ecological environment should be perfected and managed from various aspects to build a socialist ecological civilization society.