论新《环境保护法》中重点环境管理制度实施的力度和效果

The Efforts for and Effectiveness of the Implementation of the Major Environmental Management Mechanisms in the Newly Amended Chinese Environmental Protection Law

环境影响评价、环境信息公开和环境公益诉讼是新《环境保护法》规定的亮点制度,其实施力度和效果是否达到立法预期是公众普遍关注的问题。在环境影响评价制度方面,新法否定了补办环评手续的合理性,在法律责任领域要求对违法者直接实施行政处罚。这一要求在实践中得到较多地方环保部门的支持,但具体操作中存在适用法律不当的问题。在环境信息公开方面,政府环境信息公开的情况好于企业,企业环境信息公开是目前环境信息公开工作中最为薄弱的环节,同时,政府环境信息公开也存在不均衡、不全面的重大不足。在环境公益诉讼方面,全国法院受理的环境公益诉讼案件数量大幅提升,且公益诉讼对解决环境问题确实起到了显著的推动作用,但环境公益诉讼数量仍然偏少、地区分布不均衡已成为制约环境公益诉讼制度进一步发挥作用的重要因素。

The mechanisms of the Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA), the Environmental Information Disclosure and the Environmental Public Interest Litigation constitute the highlights of the newly amended Chinese Environmental Protection Law which has entered into force on Jan 1st, 2015.Thus, the efforts for and effectiveness of the implementation of such mechanisms have been greatly concerned by the public. Firstly, according to the amended Environmental Law, the parties are prohibited from providing an EIA report after the construction of the concerned projects. Although many local Environmental Protection Bureaus(EPBs) have tried to comply with the new provisions, some cases revealed that many of the offenders were unduly fined due to the misapplication of the new provisions. With regard to the environmental information disclosure, the implementation by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the local EPBs are more effective than that by the polluters especially the enterprises. In this regard, the implementation of the environmental information disclosure by enterprises is likely to be the weakest part of the environmental information disclosure system. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile noting that the implementation and enforcement of the environmental information disclosure by the government still needs to be improved especially concerning the problems of unbalanced and incomplete disclosure of information. Last but not least, the number of cases of the environmental public interest litigations increased significantly in the year of 2015, which greatly helped with environmental protection. However, it should be noted that the effectiveness of the environmental public interest litigation system has been limited by several hindrances, i.e. the still small proportion of the environmental public interest litigations in all categories of cases, and the unbalanced geographical distribution of such litigations.