China's environmental problems mainly include

Environmental problems are common problems faced by the international community, especially China. Due to the special national conditions, China's environmental problems present unique reasons, and with the gradual deepening of the western development, the construction of environmental legal system is particularly urgent, but there are many disadvantages in the current environmental legal system construction. This paper discusses the particularity of the causes of environmental problems in China, and puts forward some reasonable suggestions for the construction of environmental legal system today.

[Keywords:] environmental issues under the rule of law

The environment is relative to the central thing. The surrounding things related to its central thing are called the environment of this central thing. Different central things have different environmental concepts. Compared with human beings, the environment refers to "the sum total of various natural and artificially transformed natural factors that affect human survival and development, including atmosphere, water, ocean, land, mineral deposits, forests, grasslands, wild animals, natural relics, cultural relics, nature reserves, scenic spots, cities and villages, etc." (1) includes both living environment and ecological environment. Environmental problems can be divided into two types. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes and mudslides are the first kind of environmental problems, while "the phenomenon that environmental quality changes caused by human activities act on people's surrounding environment and the harmful effects of such changes on human production, life and health" (2) is the second kind of environmental problems, which the author will elaborate in this paper.

In recent years, China's environmental problems have become increasingly prominent, which is not only a link in social development, but also a major practical issue related to the overall development. Today, with the increasingly mature market economy and the gradual advancement of the legal system, it should be said that bringing environmental protection into the track of the rule of law and comprehensive management based on the rule of law is the best solution to the current environmental problems. This paper attempts to discuss the environmental problems and environmental rule of law in China.

First, the emergence of environmental problems and the analysis of the present situation and causes of environmental problems in China

(A) the emergence of environmental problems

Environmental problems have existed since ancient times. They developed with the development of social productive forces, and their environmental problems are different in different historical periods. According to different historical periods, we can divide environmental problems into two types. One is environmental problems in the traditional sense, which mainly refers to the environmental damage and resource waste caused by people's unreasonable development and utilization of natural resources before the industrial revolution, that is, soil erosion and resource waste caused by excessive reclamation, deforestation, overgrazing, looting and fishing. For example, "the residents of Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and other places destroyed all the forests in order to get cultivated land, but they never dreamed that it would be like this. Today, it has become a barren land. Because they have made these places lose forests and lost the center for accumulating and storing water. " The other is the environmental problem in the modern sense, which means that with the rapid development of industry, agriculture and urbanization after the industrial revolution, in addition to the intensified destruction of the above-mentioned natural resources, more serious environmental problems such as "three wastes" (waste gas, waste water and waste residue) pollution, noise pollution, radioactive pollution and pesticide pollution are being caused, and the breadth and depth of pollution have greatly exceeded a large number of "environmental hazards" events (also known as environmental hazards, Refers to the social harm caused by people to the living environment and ecological environment, including environmental damage), such as the well-known1984 65438+Bhopal pesticide plant gas leakage incident on February 3, and the radioactive leakage incident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union on April 26, 1986. These two incidents still make people feel a sense of fear.

(B) China's environmental problems and causes analysis

1, current situation of environmental problems in China

At present, the pollution and destruction of the environment has developed into a world-wide major social problem that threatens the survival and development of mankind. There are three kinds of new global and wide-area environmental problems facing mankind: one is global and wide-area environmental pollution; Second, large-scale ecological destruction; The third is the sudden serious pollution incident.

At present, the environmental problems in developed countries are mainly environmental pollution, while those in developing countries are mainly environmental damage. In China, there are two kinds of environmental problems, environmental damage and environmental pollution, both of which are very serious. According to statistics, China is one of the countries with the largest emissions of environmental pollutants in the world, with the annual emissions of pollutants reaching more than 43 million tons (including 28 million tons of soot and 6.5438+0.46 million tons of sulfur dioxide). From 65438 to 0988, the total amount of wastewater discharged in China was 36.8 billion tons, including 26.8 billion tons of industrial wastewater, the treatment rate was only 27%, and the damage to the natural ecological environment was also quite serious. At present, the area of soil erosion in China has expanded from1160,000 square kilometers in the early days of liberation to10.5 million square kilometers. (3)

The economic losses caused by environmental pollution and destruction to our country are extremely alarming. Now let's look at such a set of data: according to incomplete statistics in the early 1980s, the annual economic loss caused by environmental pollution was 69 billion yuan, and the annual economic loss caused by partial destruction of natural ecological environment was 26.5 billion yuan, accounting for about 14% of the total industrial and agricultural output value of that year. From such a set of data, we can clearly see that the serious environmental problems in our country have seriously hindered the healthy development of our national economy, which is bound to be extremely unfavorable to our future economic development.

2. Analysis of the causes of environmental problems in China.

There are many reasons why China's environmental problems are so serious, including natural geographical factors, economic, cultural and social factors, and China's specific national conditions that make it special. The following author will make a specific exposition.

(1) Economic factors

At present, China's economy is in a period of transition from traditional planned economy to market economy, and it is also a period of rapid economic growth. Judging from the economic development history of developed countries, this stage is the most serious period of ecological and environmental problems, so the ecological and environmental pressure faced by China in this period will be even heavier.

First, the deterioration of environmental problems caused by economic development. China's economic system reform is a great liberation of social productive forces, which has stimulated the rapid growth of the national economy, but at the same time, the scale of resource development and utilization and pollutant discharge of various industries will also increase at a high speed. However, because the national economy is still in the transition period from extensive to intensive, people only pay attention to the figures of economic growth, but often ignore the heavy price behind it: predatory resource development has caused great damage to the environment; In recent years, the eco-environmental problems in China have increased geometrically.

Second, the conflict between economic interests and environmental protection. The pursuit of high profits in the development of market economy is the interest of a relatively few people, while environmental protection is the interest of most people. The two are opposites, and it is easier for the law to regulate this obviously conflicting social relationship. However, China's economy is dominated by public ownership, and the main body of economic interests and environmental interests is unified. However, in recent years, the deterioration of rural environment in China is particularly obvious. In order to "get rid of poverty and become rich", some farmers in township enterprises would rather endure the damage caused by environmental pollution to the country, the collective and themselves. In this regard, the state has to take compulsory measures to close the "fifteen small" enterprises. But in a sense, the government is not only a mediator of the conflict, but also a party to the conflict (local interests). Illegal camps are huge and it is extremely difficult to enforce the law.

(2) Human and social factors

"Ecology, as a science, has always had an indissoluble bond with' human society' since its birth. If the previous ecology showed more natural attributes, then the modern ecology showed more social attributes. " (4) The most obvious environmental problem is the reason of humanistic society. At present, environmental problems have a greater impact on China.

First, China has a large population and great pressure on environmental resources. There is a close causal relationship between environmental problems and population. At a certain stage of social development, under the conditions of a certain geographical environment and productivity level, the population growth should have an appropriate proportion. Population and environmental problems are great challenges for the development of contemporary China. The huge population and rapid growth have caused a series of social and economic problems, which have had a great impact on the environment. It can be said that the population problem in China is one of the biggest social problems that are difficult to reverse in a short time, which is not taboo. The population problem leads to the absolute shortage of resources in China, so the phenomenon of uncontrolled development of resources often occurs, accompanied by amazing waste, which has caused great pressure on the implementation of China's sustainable economic development strategy.

Second, public awareness of environmental protection is generally poor. "The so-called environmental awareness refers to people's awareness of participating in environmental protection according to their basic values on the basis of understanding environmental conditions and environmental protection rules, which is finally reflected in behaviors that are conducive to environmental protection." (5) At present, most people in our country lack a clear understanding of the objective situation of environmental problems. According to the survey, most people's judgments on environmental conditions are mild and insensitive, and they lack understanding of many fundamental environmental problems, or even don't understand them at all. Moreover, a considerable part of the public is unwilling to take the initiative to acquire environmental knowledge. Around "World Environment Day" in 2000, the State Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Education jointly conducted a national public environmental awareness survey report. The results show that the environmental awareness and knowledge level of the public in China are still at a low level, and the environmental moral concept is weak. The public's environmental awareness in China is highly dependent on the government, which plays a decisive role in enhancing the public's environmental awareness. From these large-scale surveys, we can see how poor our citizens' environmental awareness is. A country's citizens' awareness of environmental protection is so poor that we can imagine what kind of environmental problems exist in this country.

Third, environmental problems and other social problems such as poverty intersect with each other and tend to form a vicious circle. There are different forms of environmental problems in today's world, but generally speaking, we can draw the conclusion that the environmental problems in rich countries are mainly pollution related to pollutants, while those in poor countries are mainly environmental damage related to natural resources. The former is easier to prevent and recover, while the latter is much more difficult to prevent and recover. China has similar environmental problems. In economically developed areas such as plains, coastal areas and big cities, environmental problems are mainly environmental pollution, which is now being alleviated through continuous governance. However, in the relatively poor areas in the west, the deterioration of the ecological environment caused by environmental damage is very serious, and there is a growing trend that environmental problems and poverty deepen simultaneously and form a vicious circle.

Second, some thoughts on the construction of environmental legal system in China.

Environmental legal system construction is a systematic project, including all aspects of social life. Here, the author makes the following discussion on the construction of China's environmental legal system, that is, some thoughts on the legalization of China's environmental problems: the transformation of legislative concepts and the strengthening of legislative practice, the improvement of law enforcement and judicature, the strengthening of legal supervision, the enhancement of citizens' awareness of environmental protection and law-abiding, and the thinking on the attribution of environmental components.

(A) change the legislative concept and strengthen legislative practice.

Since the promulgation of China's "Environmental Protection Law" for more than 20 years, the scope of legal adjustment has basically not changed, and environmental law has not changed in the legislative rise. It is still a traditional environmental law system with environmental pollution prevention as its core. In fact, environmental protection includes not only the control of existing pollution, but also the protection of the existing environment. The long-term neglect of this aspect in China's legislation is also an important reason for the ineffective protection of natural resources in China. When talking about the environmental protection work in the western region, the person in charge of the State Environmental Protection Administration stressed that "prevention should be given priority and protection should be given priority" in accordance with the requirements of General Secretary Jiang, and that pollution prevention and control should pay equal attention to ecological environment, ecological construction and protection, urban pollution control and comprehensive improvement of rural environment, making overall plans and comprehensive decisions, and striving to realize the leap-forward development of environmental undertakings in the western region.

Environmental protection law is a legal norm and general name formulated or recognized by the state to protect the environment and natural resources and prevent pollution and other public hazards. In other words, environmental protection should be brought into an institutionalized, standardized and scientific track. As far as the central legislation is concerned, it is necessary to seek truth from facts, proceed from reality, take overall consideration as the principle, follow the unity of the legal system, establish an environmental management system, establish an efficient organization, namely an environmental management institution, undertake the task of guidance and coordination, and clarify the setting of relevant institutions through legislation. And gradually determine the rights, obligations and illegal responsibilities of relevant subjects. Only by imposing sanctions on offenders can the rights of victims be effectively protected. At present, in China's environmental legislation, the crime of environmental pollution and national environmental legislation are mainly national environmental protection laws and regulations. National environmental legislation has fundamental orientation and principles, is the law of national environmental activities, is the basis of local legislation, and is the key to environmental legislation. At present, there are many pollution prevention norms and few ecological resources protection measures in China, which should be the focus of future environmental legislation revision.

Local environmental legislation is local and environmental protection laws and regulations formulated by local power organs and corresponding local administrative organs. It is the main means to bring environmental protection into the track of rule of law, and it is also the safeguard measure to implement national environmental protection laws and regulations and manage local environmental protection affairs. Local environmental legislation must strengthen environmental management, highlight key points, give consideration to other guiding ideology, persist in serving environmental management, and regard environmental protection as the focus of environmental protection legislation. Specifically, there are the following principles: ① the principle of establishing a large environmental legislation system. As mentioned above, there are many defects in national environmental legislation, but there are few measures to protect ecological resources. Correspondingly, there is also a phenomenon that local environmental legislation focuses on pollution prevention legislation and ignores ecological environmental protection legislation, which leads to practical work. Adhere to the legislative principle of macro-environment, and require that human settlements and ecological environment be considered as an organism in local legislation, so as to form a macro-environmental system by protecting the ecological environment, preventing pollution and various disasters; ② Strengthen the principle of pollution liability system, and further clarify and strengthen the legal liability of polluters. It is a basic principle of environmental protection that local legislation should specify the polluters and responsibilities in national legislation, and whoever pollutes should be treated. Under the market economy system, market players are profit-seeking, and there is often a phenomenon that some enterprises would rather be punished than polluted for short-term economic benefits. Therefore, it is urgent to strengthen local environmental legislation and polluter responsibility, which should also be said to be the embodiment of the principle of rights and obligations in the environmental protection law. (3) Adhere to the principle of combining reality with advancement. The pollution situation varies from place to place, and the specific tasks of environmental protection are also different. This requires local legislation to be based on local reality and adhere to the flexible combination of national legislative principles and local reality. At the same time, due to the obvious lag of summative legislation and the continuous development of social relations, local legislation should be ahead of legislation on the basis of scientific foresight to make up for the lag of national legislation.

(b) Improving law enforcement and administration of justice

China's environmental protection has always emphasized administrative leadership, and the government plays a leading role. Judging from the development trend in recent years, China's Environmental Protection Administration has been showing a growing trend. At present, the focus of environmental protection work is to strengthen environmental law enforcement, which makes the characteristics of environmental administrative leadership more distinct. Although administrative leadership has its advantages, such as high efficiency and complex characteristics of adapting to China's ecological environment, its limitations are also obvious. First of all, it is mainly suitable for pollution prevention, but it is another matter for natural resource protection and ecological environment construction; Secondly, the administrative leadership has a strict subordinate relationship, which is prone to departmental division and compartmentalization, and cannot form an organic whole, resulting in institutional confusion; Furthermore, the administrative-led way reduces the status and role of environmental justice, and also reduces the function of environmental law enforcement, making the role of justice minimal. Therefore, to realize the environmental rule of law, we must improve law enforcement and justice. But how to improve the justice of law enforcement? The author believes that efforts should be made in the following aspects:

First of all, pollution prevention and control should develop in the direction of administrative criminal law, combining administrative responsibility with criminal responsibility, and raising a large number of existing administrative penalties to criminal responsibility penalties, and procuratorial organs should actively participate in it.

Secondly, ecological protection should gradually expand the scope of civil protection and narrow the scope of criminal responsibility, which depends on the improvement of citizens' property rights, the correct handling of the relationship between economic construction and environmental protection, and the improvement of public environmental awareness.

Thirdly, establish a public interest litigation system with the procuratorate as the main body, and the procuratorate will file a lawsuit on behalf of the victims of environmental pollution. The current environmental tort litigation is stipulated by the General Principles of the Civil Law. Due to the wide range of victims of environmental infringement, the phenomenon of "hitchhiking" is easy to occur in litigation, which is not conducive to the claim between * * * and the parties. The establishment of public interest litigation system can overcome this drawback, and it is a good policy to implement this measure in the current situation that the public's legal awareness is generally weak in China.

Finally, we should correctly understand and grasp the strengthening of environmental law enforcement. The author thinks that law enforcement is the terminal link in the systematic project of environmental legal system construction in China. If the previous problems are not solved, it will be tantamount to blocking the mouth and controlling the water, treating the symptoms rather than the root cause, and even intensifying contradictions and laying hidden dangers for the development of the environmental legal system.

(3) Strengthen legal supervision

Because China is led by environmental protection administration, its power is relatively centralized, and the administrative department has greater discretion, so legal supervision is particularly important. "If the rule of law is an important means to aggregate legal phenomena such as legal norms, legal relations and activities to realize obligations in the legal adjustment mechanism, then legal supervision is an important legal measure to guarantee the rule of law at all stages of legal adjustment. If a country does not have strict and powerful legal supervision, there will be no rule of law. " It can be seen that the real value of legal supervision lies not in form, but in strength.

China's environmental legal supervision generally includes: the supervision of power organs, the supervision of administrative organs, the supervision of public opinion, the supervision of political parties and social organizations, the supervision of the people and the supervision of the judiciary.

In recent years, the supervision of power organs has played an important role. The Environment and Resources Committee of the National People's Congress has repeatedly listened to the work reports of the State Council and the Supreme People's Court on resources and environmental protection, and put forward many constructive suggestions on how to promote the implementation of China's sustainable economic development and strengthen environmental protection. And adhere to the combination of legal supervision and public opinion supervision, organize and always adhere to the activities of China's environmental protection century trip, environmental law enforcement inspection and so on.

The supervision of administrative organs takes environmental supervision as the core, and has set up special environmental supervision institutions to strengthen environmental law enforcement.

The supervision of political parties on social organizations mainly appears in the form of public opinion supervision, but the degree of public opinion supervision system in China is very low and its overall role is limited.

Judicial supervision is mainly the supervision of the people's procuratorate, which is the organ of judicial supervision, and the field of environmental supervision is basically blank.

People's supervision is mainly manifested in public participation with the content of environmental evaluation system, and public participation depends on the public's environmental awareness first, and then on the guarantee of the system. There are many problems in these two aspects in our country, and the supervision of the people is basically in its infancy, lacking operational norms and limited efforts.

(D) to enhance citizens' awareness of environmental protection and law-abiding concept.

Here, citizens' environmental awareness and law-abiding concept are not only the reasons for legal education and judicial authority, but more importantly, the cultivation of citizens' legal beliefs. In developed countries such as Europe and America, democracy and freedom have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people through the bourgeois revolution, and the road to modernization of the rule of law has been as long as 300 years. However, due to the deep-rooted feudal ruling ideology, China has always rejected the law, especially the environmental protection law. Only the environment and freedom have been destroyed in history, but there is no tradition of protecting the environment. At the same time, under the condition of public ownership, the right to natural resources is more abstract, and the relationship between man and nature has long been placed in the economic relationship between workers and labor objects rather than the legal relationship. Therefore, it still takes a long way for environmental awareness to take root in people's hearts.

(5) Thinking about the attribution of environmental components.

Forests, mountains, grasslands, wasteland, water resources and other natural resources are the main aspects of the environment. According to the General Principles of Civil Law, in China, the ownership of these properties belongs to the state or the collective, that is, the ownership is separated in a certain period of time. Although the law clearly stipulates that users "have the obligation of management, protection and rational use" (6), users often evade this obligation in order to pursue more economic benefits. Of course, there are many factors in our country at present, but the external influence is very important. Externality refers to the situation that the actor's private cost, social cost, private benefit and social benefit are consistent or inconsistent. Externality can be divided into positive externalities and negative externalities. Positive externality refers to the behavior that the private cost of the actor is greater than the social cost and the private benefit is less than the social benefit. At this time, because the actor pays more than the income, his motivation will be insufficient. On the contrary, negative externalities will lead to personal benefits greater than social benefits, which will lead to the transfer of costs to society or others, for example, by harming the interests of others or public interests.

It is precisely because of this externality that it affects the actor. In fact, people in banks often disregard social interests and pursue personal interests. For example, the policies of "returning farmland to forests" and "closing hillsides to facilitate afforestation" implemented in China to protect the environment will obviously reduce the income of farmers and forestry workers, but the government has no effective measures to compensate their losses. Therefore, in many places, illegal logging and deforestation have been repeatedly banned.

However, if private individuals are given a longer contract period, "personal items are often protected to the greatest extent". (7) From this point of view, China people often have a tradition of cherishing their own property, and believe that people will do their best to protect their property from their own long-term interests. On this basis, the government's macro-control should have a very obvious effect. Therefore, it is worth thinking about reforming the current ownership model of natural resources in China.

Third, a brief summary.

The construction of environmental legal system is a systematic project, which cannot be accomplished overnight. Moreover, due to the particularity of China's national conditions and the causes of environmental problems, foreign environmental control measures (relative to the solution of China's environmental problems) do not have much experience to learn from. Only based on the actual situation of our country can we explore a feasible road of rule of law suitable for our national conditions. It should be said that this is a long and difficult process, and the rule of law comes first in a big country. The times have given us the heavy responsibility of protecting the environment with the rule of law, and we will certainly advance along this road.

[References]

(1) Ci Hai, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 348 pages.

(2) Same as (1)

(3) China Environmental Bulletin, 1988- 12-30.

(4) Ma Shijun: A Perspective of China Ecology, Beijing Science Press, 1990.

(5) Hong Dayong: "Environmental Problems in Contemporary China", in Teaching and Research 1998 8.

(6) General Principles of Civil Law of People's Republic of China (PRC)

(7) Aristotle: Politics, The Commercial Press, 1983, p. 328.