法治强化能够促进污染治理吗?——来自环保法庭设立的证据

Does Rule of Law Promote Pollution Control? Evidence from the Establishment of the Environmental Court

强化法治是生态环境建设的重要保障,也是确保环境法律法规发挥作用的关键所在。本文利用中国2007年开始在中级人民法院设立环保法庭这一准自然实验,运用283个地级市2003—2014年的面板数据和双重差分方法,评估了环保司法强化对环境污染治理的影响。研究表明:第一,环保法庭有效降低了工业污染物的排放总量和人均排放量,法治强化能够促进环境污染治理。第二,环保法庭的污染治理效应受到环保法庭的组织效率和该项制度的执行情况的影响;相比于环保合议庭,环保审判庭的减排效应更加明显,实际运行良好的环保法庭更能够促进环境污染治理。第三,在作用机制上,设立环保法庭能够有效改善地区环境污染纠纷司法处理水平,提升政府环境行政处罚和公众环保参与度;在居民司法维权、公众环保参与和政府环境监管程度越高的地区,法治强化的污染治理效应更加明显。本文的结论意味着,在完善环保法律法规体系的同时,还应该不断加强环境司法的能力建设和法治水平,实现中国环境污染治理"有法可依"与"有法必依"的同步推进。

Serious environmental pollution has become a major problem in China.However,the traditional governance mode reflects obvious administrative intervention and uncertainty and the environmental pollution situation in China has not been fundamentally reversed.To promote the construction of a normalization mechanism for environmental governance,it is important to improve the legalization of environmental pollution control,which has become an important direction of China's environmental governance reform in recent years.The rule of laws in environmental governance consists of two levels,the construction of laws and the building of judicial capacity.Since the promulgation of the Environmental Protection Law in 1989,China's environmental laws have gradually improved.However,China has been slow to build judicial capacity.The importance of environmental justice for pollution control both is reflected in its own pollution control role and,more importantly,provides a strong basis for environmental administrative punishments.This helps to provide clear definitions of property rights for emissions trading.To improve the efficiency of environmental justice,China started to develop its environmental court system at the beginning of the 21st century.In 2007,the first true environmental court was formally established in the Guiyang Intermediate People's Court.The pilot has expanded and become a key force in promoting the rule of law in environmental pollution control in China.This paper empirically evaluates the pollution control effect of environmental courts using the difference-in-differences method.First,we examine the impact of environmental courts on regional industrial pollutants emission reductions by matching the industrial waste water and industrial SO2 emissions data of prefecture-level cities.Then,using public data from referee documents and the annual work reports of the courts,we examine the role of environmental courts in the efficiency of the judicial treatment of environmental pollution disputes across regions and analyze the mechanisms that promote judicial efficiency through placebo testing and other policy interventions.Finally,we analyze how the effect of environmental courts on pollution control depends on regional characteristics.We have three findings.First,the establishment of environmental courts effectively reduces the total discharge of industrial pollutants and per capital emissions in the pilot areas,especially for industrial waste water,meaning that the courts have a certain dynamic governance effect on industrial pollution.Second,the court's effect is affected by the organizational efficiency of the court and the implementation of the system.Compared with a collegiate bench,the effectiveness of a trial court's emission reduction is more obvious.Environmental courts that are running well promote environmental pollution control.Third,environmental courts improve both the level of pollution in a region and government environmental regulations,whose control effect has obvious heterogeneities across regions.In areas where public participation in the environment,measured as residents'involvement in judicial proceedings and government environmental supervision,is higher,environmental courts have more significant pollution control effects.The environmental justice specialization reform represented by the environmental court promotes the improvement of the judicial treatment of environmental disputes.Moreover,strengthening the environmental rule of law improves local governments pollution control efforts and public environmental participation.This paper has two main contributions.First,we identify the impact of China's environmental courts and assess their environmental pollution control effect.Second,we provide a reference for understanding the dynamic effects of pollution control and the heterogeneous effects of environmental courts across regions to promote the formation of a comprehensive pollution control legal system in China.