Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2020

Reconstructing Environmental Tort Relief System through “Ecological Recovery Theory”

(Abstract)

Lü Zhongmei and Dou Haiyang

Setting out from the practice of the Chinese environmental tort system, we investigate its actual judicial and legislative conduct and sort out the theoretical logic underlying it. Following forty years of practice and development, the identification of behavioral standards in the environmental tort system has changed from focusing solely on environmental pollution to focusing on both environmental pollution and ecological damage; the targets of relief have changed from focusing solely on private interest to the dual protection of private interest and public welfare; and the manner of relief has changed from traditional civil relief to comprehensive relief based on ecological restoration. Underlying this substantial amount of practice is a great change in the theory of damage, that is, from a gradual division of traditional tort damage theory to the formation of specialized relief theory, i.e., the ecological recovery theory of environmental tort. Based on a holistic environmental philosophy, the new theory takes the whole ecological environment as the object of adjustment, and restoration as the main means of relief. Problem-oriented theoretical innovation provides a basis for the institutional construction of the legal system. In terms of the civil code and environmental law norms, we should engage in reconstruction on the basis of the separation of theories, so as to achieve system separation on the basis of coordination.