Early stage participation crucial for environmental issues
chinagate.cn by Jiao Meng, September 9, 2015 Adjust font size:
Environmental courts need more experience
The Supreme People's Court has set up a tribunal for environment cases to enlarge the role of the judiciary in solving environmental conflicts. It will hear civil cases involving pollution, the exploitation of resources and environmental conservation efforts such as forests and rivers, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
About 134 special environment tribunals have been established at local courts in 16 provincial divisions since the first was founded in southwestern China's Guizhou Province in 2007. All provincial high courts will now set up similar institutions, while the city and lower courts can decide what to do based on their own conditions.
De Boer believed it’s great that so many specialized courts are emerging all over China. “I’m confident this will help solve environmental problems through the use of law,” he said.
“Some courts are very mature, like the one in Guizhou. Others have only just been established, so their judges still need to learn more and get more experience with environmental cases.”
He also mentioned that apart from the courts, many Chinese NGO’s don’t yet have the human or financial resources to do public interest litigation well, which needs to be strengthened.