Research on the Reform of the Judicial Relief System for Environmental Disputes in China Professor Luo Li FACEBOOK: In today’s China, with its increasingly serious environmental situation and the difficulty in solving environmental disputes, the significance of establishing environmental protection trial divisions is of crucial importance – Professor Li argues. TWITTER: Must #China implement #environmental trial divisions to foster #environmental protection? Professor Li’s view In today’s China, with its increasingly serious environmental situation and the difficulty in solving environmental disputes, the significance of establishing environmental protection trial divisions is of crucial importance – Professor Li argues. On November 20, 2007, the Intermediate People’s Court in Guiyang City established for the first time an environmental protection trial division in China. According to the regulations of the trial division, the court’s jurisdiction includes the protection of water and soil in the Guiyang area, sewage infringement, forest protection, compensation for damages, environmental public interest litigation, and other types of first and second instances of civil, administrative, criminal, and related enforcement cases. Having this example of the first trial division, other Chinese cities have successively set up trial divisions and courts for environmental protection In terms of judicial practice, the establishment and operation of the environmental trial division of the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court and the Wuxi Intermediate People’s Court has accelerated the punitive process for environmental pollution or destruction, keeping law-infringing behaviors in check and providing more timely relief to the victims. Therefore, on the basis of improving substantive and procedural law, China should proceed by combining the needs of the environmental judicial courts, promptly summarizing and displaying the experience of successful pilot projects, and solving the urgent problems during the process of establishing and operating environmental trial divisions, such as the legal prerequisites for establishing them and their specific trial rules, in order to realize in full their positive effects. Overall, it is argued that China should pay attention to strengthening the links between related legislation on judicial relief for environmental disputes and, meanwhile, raise the professional knowledge level of judges on hearing environmental disputes by centralizing training and importing environmental law professionals. It should also seek to improve the level of the judges’ trial knowledge and ability within the field of environmental law in order to fully realize impartiality in the judicial system. China should revise its Civil Procedure Law and its Administrative Procedure Law as soon as possible and clearly stipulate provisions for the environmental public welfare litigation system, the plaintiff qualifications for instituting environmental public welfare proceedings, the distributive rules guiding the plaintiff and defendant’s burden of proof in environmental public welfare lawsuits, the obligation that administrative authorities read reports in advance in order to prevent the public from abusing the right of appeal, etc. Such reforms would help provide the legal basis for the successful development of environmental public interest litigation in China.
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