Public interest litigation contributing to ecological civilization development

Procuratorial public interest litigation has effectively promoted the development of China's ecological civilization, with prosecutors so far having handled about 390,000 public interest cases related to protecting ecology, the environment and resources, the Supreme People's Procuratorate said.

Hu Weilie, head of the SPP's eighth procuratorial office, said that procuratorates nationwide have put ecological, environmental and resources protection in a prominent position under the procuratorial public interest litigation system, and the number of related cases handled accounted for 52.2 percent of all public interest litigation cases.

Hu said that the protection of the ecology, environment and resources is one significant statutory area of procuratorial public interest litigation, which has successfully handled a series of major cross-regional cases, helping to solve a large number of difficult environmental governance problems, he said.

"As an important institutional arrangement for the development of a national ecological civilization in the new era, public interest litigation has played a positive role in the process of facilitating the historic upheaval of the ecological civilization progress and has attracted widespread attention from the international community, as have China's wisdom and its plans to solve the Tragedy of the Commons and strengthen the judicial protection of public interests," he said.

Next, with a focus on major national strategies — such as the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, ecological protection, the high-quality development of the Yellow River and rural vitalization — procuratorial public interest litigation will actively perform its role in protecting air, water, soil, marine and biodiversity and help strengthen the battle against pollution, Hu said.

The procuratorates will take an active role in improving urban and rural living environments and solving prominent environmental problems in people's lives. They will also pay close attention to urban light pollution, noise pollution, the treatment of new pollutants and the implementation of the strategy of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, he said.

Hu said the procuratorates will also deepen cooperation with courts, public security, ecological and environmental departments. They will also unblock channels for sharing information about procuratorial public interest litigation and administrative law enforcement to boost protection.