By Chang Jiwen, Institute of Resources and Environment Policies, DRC & Leng Luosheng, Law School of Beijing Normal University

Research Report, Special Issue, No.15, 2018 (Total 1582) 2018-7-19

Abstract: The government at each administrative level has the legal obligation to report to the respective people’s congress on the environmental performance and the fulfillment of environmental protection goals in the respective region. The implementation of the reporting system reflects the resolution and confidence of governments at various levels to manage the environment affairs in accordance with the law. Facts show that its implementation in 2016 was beyond people’s satisfaction. In 2017, the implementation of the reporting system presented several positive characteristics such as the number of reporting entities had increased to a large extent, report content became more standardized and the report time basically reflected the span of the year. However, some problems remain to be addressed. For instance, the publicity of environmental information was inadequate; government departments were inactive in preparing the environmental report; and normalized mechanism of people’s congress supervision, supervision mechanism of social participation and legal liability mechanism were absent. In the future, relevant information on environmental report needs to be unleashed in a timely manner, the liability mechanism to address governments’ failure to perform duties in accordance with the law needs to be fleshed out and more channels need to be made for the public’s participation. In addition, more work should be done to consolidate the construction of the regular supervision mechanism of the people’s congress and strengthen the contact and communication between the people’s congress and government at each administrative level so as to ensure the effective implementation of the reporting system.

Key words: environmental reporting system, people’s congress supervision, environmental protection goals, environmental situation