环境行政决策程序建构中的公众参与

Public Participation in the Construction of Environmental Administrative Decision-making Procedures

公众参与是我国环境行政决策程序建构的基础和重点,是现代民主政治的一种具体表现。公众参与旨在通过公众平等参与的理性协商、对话过程而形成科学、公正的决策。环境决策中的公众参与,属于公众参与中的一个类别,既具有公众参与的一般性,也具有环境行政的特殊性。公众参与过程作为环境行政决策程序中的核心环节,对决策的正当性、合理性起着至关重要的作用。然而,现阶段我国环境行政决策程序中公众参与制度存在着诸多问题,主要表现在:决策初期,环境信息公开程度较低,公众参与主要体现在末端参与;决策中期,公众参与的有效方式单一,行政机关主导,缺少各方利益群体的论辩与质证环节;决策末期,公众参与的结果难以得到及时反馈,公众积极参与决策过程的信心以及政府的公信力被严重削弱。因此,在思路上,以"事前环境信息的公开透明、事中环境行政决策过程的细节性完善以及事后必要的评估与审查机制"为环境行政决策程序构建的着眼点,以"拓宽环境信息公开渠道,加强环境行政决策参与形式的组织化程度,完善对环境行政决策结果的反馈机制"入手,构建公众参与的相关具体制度,使我国环境行政决策公众参与得到量与质的同步提升,从而增强我国环境领域的法治与民主建设,为今后拓宽我国环境市场的发展空间提供理论上的可行方案。

Public participation is the basis of and the key to the construction of environmental administrative decision-making procedures and a concrete manifestation of modern democratic politics. The fundamental purpose of public participation is to formulate scientific and fair decisions through equal public participation in rational negotiation and conversation. Public participation in environmental decision-making as a subcategory of public participation,possess both commonality with public participation and the particularity of environmental administration. The process of the public participation as a core link in the environmental administrative decision-making procedures plays a vital role in guaranteeing the legitimacy and rationality of decision-making. However,at current stage multiple problems exist in the public participation system in the procedure of administrative decision-making,mainly manifested in the low degree of environmental information disclosure at the early stage of decision-making,which leads to the late public participation; limited channels of public participation during the process of decision-making,which is often dominated by administrative organs and lack of debates and cross-examination by the interest groups; and insufficient timely feedback on the public participation at the final stage,which dampens public confidence and the government＇s credibility. In view of this,to ensure open and transparent environmental information disclosure beforehand,improved details during the intermediate process and necessary evaluation and review mechanism after the decision making,the paper proposes relevant concrete systems of public participation,such as expanding the channels of the environmental information disclosure,increasing organizational scale by diversifying forms of participation in environmental administrative decision-making and enhancing the mechanism of feedback on the result of the decisionmaking,in the hope of improving the quantity and quality of the public participation in the environmental administrative procedures,strengthening the rule of law and democracy in addressing environmental issues in China,and offering theoretically grounded schemes to broaden the developmental space of China＇s environmental market.