Types of Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China and Exploration of New Frontiers

Abstract

Since “ecological civilization” was written into the constitution, China has continuously strengthened ecological and environmental protection and innovatively established an environmental public interest litigation system. However, China’s current environmental public interest litigation system is not sound, especially since the types and scope of environmental public interest litigation are unclear, which is the core problem we aim to solve. To explore the types of environmental public interest litigation in China and the possibility of expanding new fields, we first used the normative analysis method to review the legislation of environmental public interest litigation in China and then conducted an empirical analysis of 215 judgment documents of environmental public interest litigation in China, and we concluded that the legal types and scope of application of environmental public interest litigation in China are constantly expanding. To reduce environmental pollution and ecological damage as much as possible, we argue that China should further expand the application of environmental administrative public interest litigation to improve the environmental civil public interest litigation system and adhere to the criteria of “behavior standards first, result standards second” and “prevention first, recovery second”. At the same time, through the internal connection mechanism between procuratorial suggestions and environmental administrative public interest litigation, the external cooperation between environmental organizations, procuratorates, and environmental administrative departments should be strengthened, and a new mechanism for environmental public interest litigation should be established and improved to accumulate useful experience in the judicial protection of China’s ecological environment.