摘要
The inconsistency and disharmony in China’s environmental legal system are seriously undermining the authority and effectiveness of environmental laws, making it hard to achieve the national environmental legislative goals. It is found in this study that at least 18 administrative regulations and rules conflict with the five recently-revised environmental laws. The legislative vacancy rate of province-level environmental laws reaches 27.8%, and that of city-level environmental laws in the major cities reaches 59.7%. Besides, 66% of the local including both province-level and city-level environmental laws have the problem of legislative lags, with an average lag of 2547.8 days. In addition, there are many legal conflicts between national environmental laws and local environmental laws. In order to help China to build a harmonious and unified environmental legal system, some suggestions are proposed in this study, including comprehensively examining the lower-level environmental laws, strengthening the leading role of local people’s congresses in environmental legislation, improving the construction of filing and review mechanism, and optimizing the mechanisms for information disclosure and public participation.
The inconsistency and disharmony in China’s environmental legal system are seriously undermining the authority and effectiveness of environmental laws, making it hard to achieve the national environmental legislative goals. It is found in this study that at least 18 administrative regulations and rules conflict with the five recently-revised environmental laws. The legislative vacancy rate of province-level environmental laws reaches 27.8%, and that of city-level environmental laws in the major cities reaches 59.7%. Besides, 66% of the local including both province-level and city-level environmental laws have the problem of legislative lags, with an average lag of 2547.8 days. In addition, there are many legal conflicts between national environmental laws and local environmental laws. In order to help China to build a harmonious and unified environmental legal system, some suggestions are proposed in this study, including comprehensively examining the lower-level environmental laws, strengthening the leading role of local people’s congresses in environmental legislation, improving the construction of filing and review mechanism, and optimizing the mechanisms for information disclosure and public participation.
