Environmental administrative public interest litigation began in July 2015 when the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress made Decision on Authorizing the Supreme People's Procuratorate to Carry out the Pilot Work of Public Interest Litigation in Some Areas, designating the people's procuratorate in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and direct-controlled municipalities), including Beijing, Inner Mongolia and Shandong, to launch a two-year pilot work of public interest litigation. On July 2, 2015, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued The Pilot Program for Procuratorial Organs to File Public Interest Litigation. In June 2017, the revised Civil Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China stipulated that The organs and organizations concerned prescribed by law may institute legal proceedings in a people's court against acts that harms the public interest, such as polluting the environment and infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of numerous consumers.
In August 2018, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the full implementation of the system, eight students of class of 2016 and 2017 from the Law School of Beijing Normal University went to four representative judicial organs including Xi 'an Railway Transportation Court, Xi 'an Yanta District People's Procuratorate, Chengdu Longquan District People's Procuratorate and Jiangyou Municipal People's Court and conducted field research. The local leading cadres warmly received the students of the practice team and gave full support to our work.
As one of the 13 pilot projects, the environmental administrative public interest litigation system has been carried out earlier and the operation is also more mature in Shanxi province. As the appointed court of environmental public interest litigation in Shaanxi province, Xi 'an Railway Transportation Court is more familiar with the system. The court introduced to the students of the practice team the development of the system in Shanxi province and summarized its own problems, mainly including the orientation of the procuratorate, court and administrative organ, the difficulty in identifying environmental pollution problems, as well as investigation and audit after prosecution. The court offered valuable insights from an objective perspective.
Xi 'an Yanta District People's Procuratorate is also the judicial organ in the pilot city. It has solved many cases of environmental administrative public interest litigation successively, but there are still many problems, such as identification of environmental pollution, complexity in finding clues, overlapping functions of administrative departments which are not conducive to accountability, etc.
Although Chengdu Longquan District People's Procuratorate is not in the pilot city, as the most developed area in Chengdu and even in Sichuan, there are many cases of environmental administrative public interest litigation. During the meeting for a whole afternoon, the prosecutors communicated with us about several questions, such as the differences between the pilot areas and non-pilot areas, the thinking and style of procuratorate’s handling cases and the procuratorate’s lack in compulsory power when handling environmental administrative public interest litigation. On the one hand, we had a further understanding of the previous problems in Xi 'an.On the other hand, we also had a further reflection on the two procuratorates' different understanding of the system.
Jiangyou Municipal People's Court, as the grass-roots court, has not received relevant cases so far. However, the court has experience in the management of environmental problems and the accountability of administrative agencies. Jiangyou, as a famous industrial city in the west, has many cement plants, steel mills, chemical plants and other enterprises with relatively higher pollution risk. The People's Court also does its best to protect the environment.
In this practical research, eight students of the practice team made choice and conducted research from several aspects such as pilot area and non-pilot area, having cases and having no cases, from the provincial high court to the people's court at the county level, etc. At the same time, we also exchanged the feelings and views of different places, which promoted the views of different judicial organs on the environmental public interest litigation system to some extent. Meanwhile, we also clearly recognized that there are still many problems in the environmental administrative public interest litigation system, such as big difference between top-level design and practice, difficulty in determining environmental impact assessment standard, high cost of grass-roots work, etc. We believe that with the efforts of all parties, the system will be further improved and play its full role.