Article
Legislative improvement
In 1979, China issued a trial version of the Environmental Protection Law. The law went through a full 10 years of testing before it was officially put into effect. It hasn't been revised in nearly 30 years. Only 2 out of 47 clauses are focused on the supervision and restrictions of government actions. The lack of such clauses has drawn concerns that government officials are not doing their job. The amendment of the Law has been discussed in the "two sessions" since 2006. Suggestions centered on higher governmental responsibility and stronger public rights.
A: So the environmental protection law has not been changed in thirty years. Why so long?
W: Yeah, I think one of the reasons is a good reason because after this law was promoted the Chinese congress has passed many special laws dealing with different pollution problems, like one law dealing with air pollution, one law dealing with water pollution, one dealing with sewage pollution, and noise pollution. So the congress focus on developing this kind of specialized law and put all kinds of environmental problems and the regulations of this specialized law. Environmental protection law is a law, like more comprehensive. So thirty years later, now we find out because we have all those specialized, detailed law, then the so-called mother law, we call the mother law really need to be changed. One reason is because many revision, the revision of the mother law, the environmental protection law has been detailized by those specialized law. And another reason is, after thirty years China has changed so much. Basically China has changed from centralized planned economy into market economy. This law, the environmental protection law still has many influence of planned economy, so we need to change it.
A: Just looking at that Article 6 says that,“all units and individuals shall have the obligation to protect the environment and shall have the right to report on or file charges against units or individuals that cause pollution or damage to the environment.”Reading that, to me, it sounds so vague. What can anyone do to enforce the law?
W: This is one of the typical phenomena of Chinese environmental law. In our law, we have many these kind of provisions, you know, vague.
A: Is there any enforcement capabilities in the old law? Can anyone be prosecuted for breaking in, or are there so many loopholes that it doesn’t ever go that far?
W: So far the enforcement of the environmental law is not as good as people had expected. There are many loopholes on one hand. On the other hand, there are still some enforcement mechanisms. In our criminal code, we have provisions dealing with this kind of, we call environmental crime.
A: I wonder too, is it hard in a situation like that, we are talking about the lake, to pin point, who the major contributor is?
W: I think it’s more important than dealing with the sudden happened accident because this kind of daily operation really cause problem in the future time. In the past years, the local officials, they mostly ignored this kind of duty. So if we change our law and make a…you know, let the law say“no, you have to be serious about your environment duty.”If you are not serious about to perform your daily environment duty, you will have problems because of the law. You may get some punishments. The previous law, our existing law, this part of provisions is very weak.
A: What are the things that need to be added to the law to make it stronger?
W: I think one way is to increase the supervision from the congress to the government. The congress men can go through some channel set by the law to say something to the government of all governmental officials. That’s one way. Another way is to let the central government have some legal channel to supervise local government. In the previous years, many times the central government found the problems. But they just have no control or no check, because in our law, there is no this kind of arrangements. Thirdly, we need channels set by law to help the society to say something about the local government. Many people at local level, they see the problem, but they have no way to express themselves through the legal arrangement. We need to amend our environmental law to add one system in the law, add one new system in the environmental protection law. That is system for information disclosure at one hand, and on the other hand is supervision and check from central government, from the congress and from the whole society from people.
A: Is there any conflict or dissention that might arise as we try to get tougher laws passed?
W: I think so. This kind of change of law is really one of the key parts of reform, or political reform. So it will hit the interest of some existing interest holder. For example, some local officials, they may don't want to change. If we change the law, we put all kinds of supervision and check, then this kind of issue, they have think about to change or not. It’s kind of in conflict with their personal interest. So it’s not an easy thing to do but it’s something we must do.