Environmental Public Interest Litigation In China：A Case of Environmental NGO “Friends of Nature”

• In Event: Environmental Risks in Transnational Contexts I

Abstract

With the development of the construction of ecological civilization in China, the public participation in environment protection become a more and more important problem. In that background, environmental public interest litigation, both in theoretical investigation and practice, appeared in China too. However, in the earlier period of the development of environmental public interest litigation in China, there are still many problems and difficulties which need to be solved and overcome. In recent year, in China, practitioners of environmental public interest litigation are mainly the environmental NGOs. Friends of Nature is one of the oldest and fames environmental NGO in China, which initiated and participated some influenced environmental public interest litigation. Taking the case of Friends of Nature’s participation of environmental public interest litigation, some related problems, such as qualification of the subject of litigation in China restricted by the new Environmental Protection Law in 2015, the restriction for NGOs in their development, the financial problems in environmental public interest litigation, and some related controversies in environmental ethics, will be discussed.

Author

• Bing Liu, STS Institute, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University