On April 24th, 2014, the eighth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress deliberated and adopted the revised environmental protection law, which will be formally implemented on January 1st next year. This is a major revision made by * * since the promulgation and implementation of the law in 1989.
The revision of the environmental protection law mainly includes strengthening environmental protection publicity and improving citizens' awareness of environmental protection; Clear the ecological protection red line; Governance and response to atmospheric pollution such as fog and haze; Clarify the legal status of environmental supervision institutions; Perfecting administrative coercive measures; Encourage and organize research on the impact of environmental quality on public health; The connection between pollution charge and environmental protection tax; Improve the regional approval restriction system; Improve the management system of pollutant discharge permit; Protection of relevant informants; Expand the subject of environmental public interest litigation; We will increase the responsibility for environmental violations in 12 areas. The number of legal provisions has also increased from 47 to 70, enhancing the enforceability and operability of the law.
The new environmental protection law * * has incorporated the ecological protection red line into the law. In terms of solving the problem of low cost of environmental violations, from the perspective of strengthening the punishment, it is reflected in many provisions, such as the implementation of integrity archives and daily continuous punishment system for polluting enterprises, and the fines will not be capped.
As a basic law, the new environmental protection law has also added regulations on planning environmental impact assessment, joint prevention and control mechanism of cross regional environmental pollution, and pollutant discharge permit to more clearly regulate the responsibilities of the government and enterprises. It has changed the traditional way of relying mainly on the government and departments to fight alone in the past, and embodies the modern environmental governance concept of multiple governance and social participation. Among them, governments at all levels are responsible for environmental quality, enterprises bear the main responsibility, citizens report violations, social organizations participate in accordance with the law, and the news media supervise by public opinion. The new environmental protection law puts more emphasis on information disclosure and public participation, and details such as citizens' adoption of a low-carbon and frugal lifestyle have also been written into the law.
The new environmental protection law has increased the responsibilities of administrative supervision departments. On the one hand, it grants many new regulatory powers to governments at all levels and environmental protection departments. On the other hand, it also stipulates strict administrative accountability measures for environmental protection departments themselves.
