环境健康风险的法典化应对

Codifying Environmental Health Risk

环境健康风险应对的政策探索正在引发环境法体系的变革,亟需厘清环境健康制度的价值定位并实现体系化完善。在2014年《环境保护法》修改之后,环境法体系对优先预防健康风险的价值追求日益清晰,包括公众健康利益较经济发展利益以及其他环境公益应具有相对优先地位,以及应对环境健康风险应树立预防理念等等。由于现行环境法在规制理念、规制模式、规制结构等方面不适应优先预防环境健康风险等需求,因此环境法在实施过程中面临难以克服的局限,需要借助环境法典编纂契机实现价值与制度的全面融合。为充分表达优先预防健康风险的价值,环境法典环境健康条款应当重点建立分类确定保护级别制度以及全过程风险评估与管理制度,并采用“总则共通性规定+分则特殊性规定”结构,综合协调现行环境法制度的“目标—手段—执行”规制结构。

Environmental health risk refers to the kind of risk that human activities or natural activities act on environmental media,cause pollutants or other hazardous substances to transform and migrate through the environment into human bodies,and ultimately harm public health.Currently,policy responses to environmental health risks are triggering changes in the environmental law system and there is an urgent need to clarify the value orientation and achieve systematic improvement of the environmental health system.Not only the potential conflict between environmental protection and economic development is universal,but also the protection of public health is not always going in the same direction as the protection of the environment itself.Therefore,the formulation of environmental health norms will inevitably be faced with the weighing of different interests.After the revision of the Environmental Protection Law in 2014,the environmental law system has become increasingly clear in its pursuit of the value of prioritizing the prevention of health risks,including the relative priority of public health interests over economic development interests and other environmental public interests,as well as the precautionary principle in addressing environmental health risks.The value pursuit of prioritizing health risk prevention does not necessarily lead to the creation of a new regulatory system.Priority should be given to the integration of the new value pursuit into the existing regulatory system.The current environmental law system,however,does not give clear priority to the value of public health interests,lacks an"integrated management"model for the prevention of environmental health risks,and fails to establish a coordinated and harmonized"goal-instrument-enforcement"regulatory structure.As a result,it faces insurmountable limitations in meeting the needs of priority prevention of environmental health risks.The codification of environmental law provides the opportunity to realize the comprehensive integration of the value and the legal system.In order to fully express the value of prioritizing health risk prevention,the environmental code should first establish a risk classification system for priority areas,identifying special areas and populations to be prioritized for protection and special pollutants to be prioritized for risk prevention;and then establish a whole-process system for risk assessment and management,integrating the concept of risk prevention into the existing"ends-means-enforcement"regulatory structure.Environmental health provisions should adopt a structure of"general provisions+special provisions"to realize the systematic expression of the value of prioritizing the prevention of health risks in the environmental fields of pollution prevention and control,nature and ecology protection,and green and low-carbon development.