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China has made a great progress in economic development; meanwhile it has paid a heavy price with respect to the environment. Environment has been destroyed so heavily as to constrain further development and impact social harmony. However litigations appealed by the citizens for the environment interest often are not fulfilled by the court. Thus, reconsideration of economic development model and environmental protection system becomes imperative.
Reality proves that the existingregulatory approach and dispute resolution methods concerning the environment failed to protect it. First the existing design of the system is originallyagainst the interest of the special attributes of the environment. The environmental public interest is with respect to citizens who live there. Environmental effects are latent, long-lasting, and causing wide-spread damage and it has proved that if environmental supervision is performedentirely by state power,citizens being completely excluded from public participation in protection and supervision, will lead to further damage to the environment. Such properties ofenvironmental interestillustrate that in order to protect the environment citizens, the real subjects of environmental interest, should take part in environmental protection and supervision.
From a national view, it made theproblem that taking economic construction as the center and ignoring environmental interestwhich makes environment eventually becomes a major bottleneck constraining economic development, and even make it close to the limit. Moreover, the dispute caused by environmental damage, especially the surge of dispute by environmental groups hasalso affected social harmonic development. Chinese government which takes social stability as the first urgent need has to introduce environmental public interest litigation to solve environmental group disputes, protect environment, and sustain economic development.
China’s reformation, opening up and introducing market economy in the past several decadescreated not only economic growth but also awakenedcitizenships such as the public awareness of environmental rights simulated bythe increasing environmental problem. The citizens gradually come to realize that, in the case that the right to appeal is severely limited and the government has no constraints,environment protection relying solely on the national bureaucracy is not enough. Inrecent years, Chinese environmental public interest litigation emerging one after another occupied a corner of the news media and it reflectssomekind ofpublic awareness ofenvironmental rights and even taking action for that rights. However most ofthe environmental public interest litigationsare not fulfilled by the court quoting conservative procedural provisions. Public awareness and participation in environmental decision-making urgently need revision of litigation system relating to the environmentpublic interest.
The value of public interest litigation system is that it will effectively resolve conflict over collective rights andmake the social forces play an important rolein the “public interest”, in which the government can’t work well. Encouraging citizensand community groups bypublic interest litigationto assist the government to carry out protection work on collective environmental interests canprevent the environmental infringement fromits bud state as much as possible to reduce the social cost; on the other hand, after the infringement, it can provide a convenient channel to maintain victim groups.
A quiet revolution in the litigation is beginningby introducing the environmental public interest litigation. This revolution, whose symbol is shown by the expansion of the right to appeal, is uncovering the original state of the nation to citizens. In this process it needs to adjust national authorities and give the court more resources to establish the judicial authority.