Professor Yang Chaofei Invited as a Guest to Luojia Environmental Law Forum

    On October 11, the 9th lecture of Luojia Environmental Law Forum was held in the School of Law. Professor Yang Chaofei, director of the China Council for Industrial Environmental Protection and member of the Ministry of Environmental Protection Science and Technology Committee, delivered a lecture entitled Reflections on the new Environmental Law.

    Professor Yang Chaofei expounded his reflections on the new Environmental Law from three aspects, including innovation and implementation of the new Environmental Lawmechanism, challenges facing the legal system, and policy orientation for the construction of environmental law system. He believed that system innovation of the new Environmental Law was reflected as follows: government should be responsible for the quality of the environment, solving the problem of illegal low cost, solving the problem of low cost for polluting environment, improving social management system for environmental protection among others. He said that the current environmental problems included environmental equity imbalance, major challenges confronted the environmental law enforcement, and conflicts between environmental law and property rights etc. Policy towards environmental legal construction should take into consideration the following five issues: handling historical issues through environmental impact assessment, implementing strict liability for pollution damage, establishing exit mechanism for heavily polluting enterprises, and enhancing enforcement awareness and methods of environmental protection etc.