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

The manifestation of environmental problems in risk society is not only pollution and ecological destruction,instead,it translates into a widespread and potential environmental risk.Our country’s environmental law has begun to construct a preventive environmental protection legal system from a preventive concept to a preventive system.The“Environmental Protection Law”revised in 2014 clearly stipulates the basic principle of“prevention first”.Under this principle,the Supreme People’s Court has officially established a Judicial interpretation,which establish the foundation.From the perspective of procedural law.Through the US,Germany,India on the prevention of environmental public interest litigation system legislative,judicial case are sorted out.Lawsuits in the U.S.and Germany are mostly aimed at preventing illegal administrative acts.However,the constitutive elements of its preventive justice system are worth exploring in depth.Among them,the American citizen litigation system was established earlier,which has such advantages as clear stipulation of filing conditions,wide range of subjects of prosecution,reasonable distribution of proof,and corresponding relief methods.By comparing and analyzing the relevant domestic laws and judicial interpretations,we can see that the current preventive environmental civil public interest litigation has some problems,such as fuzzy accepting standards,limited scope of the subject of prosecution,disputes over the distribution of burden of proof,and imperfect liability methods.In this paper,relevant mechanisms should be improved based on the analysis of the legislation and practice of the preventive environmental civil public interest litigation,In view of the difficulty in identifying significant risks,this paper explains the meaning of “significant” and “risk”respectively,and clarifies that major risks should be environmental hazards with high probability of damage occurring.In view of the fuzzy rules of proof,this paper analyzes the irrationality of the inversion of burden of proof and the highly probable standard of proof in the field of environmental tort litigation,and proposes to improve the rules of shifting burden of proof and realize the diversification of standard of proof.In view of the shortcomings of preventive responsibility,the system of environmental protection prohibition order should be added to broaden the forms of preventive responsibility,and improve the enforcement strength to ensure the implementation of the responsibility in place.