Protecting the blue home by law
2024-06-12
The institutional innovation and rule improvement of the Marine Environmental Protection Law need to be implemented in the specific actions of law enforcement, supervision, and judiciary to exert its effectiveness, which needs to be demonstrated through the compliance of the whole population with the law. June 8th this year is the 16th World Oceans Day and the 17th National Oceans Awareness Day, with the theme of "Protecting the Harmonious Coexistence of Man and Nature in the Marine Ecosystem". World Ocean Day and National Ocean Awareness Day are important platforms for promoting public awareness of the ocean and promoting the concept of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The ocean is the cradle of life and the "blue home" of humanity and countless creatures. The marine ecosystem provides abundant resources such as food and medicine for the sustainable development of human society, and has functions such as climate regulation and carbon sequestration. Protecting the marine ecosystem is an important area for promoting China's ecological civilization construction and modernization of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. Protecting marine ecosystems and biodiversity cannot be achieved without the guarantee of the rule of law. China passed the Marine Environmental Protection Law as early as 1982, and has since made multiple revisions and improvements based on changes in the marine environmental protection situation and economic and social development. Under the strong guarantee of the rule of law, China's typical marine ecosystem has been effectively protected, and marine biodiversity has significantly increased. In 2023, China will revise the Marine Environmental Protection Law again, and the newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law will come into effect on January 1, 2024. This is an important measure for China to strengthen the legal guarantee of marine ecological environment protection, aiming to solve the prominent problems found in the previous enforcement inspections of marine environmental protection law. By absorbing effective experience and practices from marine environmental protection work practice, various institutional innovations and measures have been carried out to improve. For example, we have further strengthened the supervision and management of marine environment, strengthened the planning system for marine ecological environment protection, clarified the natural shoreline control system, improved the legal system for marine pollution prevention and control, and promoted the construction of the extraterritorial application system of China's marine environmental protection laws. Since the implementation of this law for six months, it has effectively promoted the protection of China's marine ecological environment. However, recently the central ecological and environmental protection inspection team has found that illegal land reclamation, excessive pollution discharge, and other phenomena that damage the marine ecological environment still exist. For example, in April 2024, relevant national departments discovered anomalies in the coastline of Qingshan Island in Dongtou District, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province through satellite imagery. They went to the site for investigation and found that the local area had illegally reclaimed land due to the construction of tourism and vacation projects, resulting in the destruction of the original coastline. Afterwards, the illegal reclamation facilities were urgently dismantled in the area, but the damaged natural coastline cannot be restored. In addition, the on-site inspection team also found that the New City Industrial Cluster in Longgang City, Wenzhou illegally occupied uninhabited islands to construct wastewater discharge pipelines. The monitoring results in April 2024 showed that one of the discharge pipelines exceeded the standard seriously. These issues indicate that driven by economic interests, insufficient emphasis on marine ecological environment protection, and weak law enforcement, the situation of marine ecological environment protection in China is still relatively severe. In the implementation of the Marine Environmental Protection Law, it is still necessary to further strengthen the responsibility of local governments in the protection of marine ecosystems, strictly implement the responsibility system and assessment system for marine environmental protection goals, and timely and effectively curb damage to the marine ecological environment. At the same time, the above issues also expose the practical challenges faced by marine environmental law enforcement and supervision. Due to the fact that the development and utilization activities of offshore islands are far from land, law enforcement and supervision need to overcome difficulties such as delayed discovery of clues, high monitoring difficulty, and the susceptibility of on-site law enforcement to weather conditions. This requires relevant departments to further innovate and improve the means of marine environmental law enforcement and supervision, better utilize information technologies such as satellite remote sensing and real-time monitoring, and encourage local people to actively participate in marine environmental protection work, steadily improving regulatory efficiency and law enforcement capabilities. For example, the discovery of abnormal shoreline conditions on Qingshan Island in Dongtou District, Wenzhou, benefited from the application of satellite imaging technology by relevant national departments. In addition to being effective through environmental law enforcement and regulation, the Marine Environmental Protection Law also needs to unleash its vitality in judicial activities. After the implementation of the newly revised Marine Environment Protection Law, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a notice on deepening the procuratorial work of marine public interest litigation, requiring the improvement of the marine ecological environment procuratorial public interest litigation system and the play of judicial and administrative coordination. On June 8th, the Supreme People's Court also released typical cases of maritime trials nationwide in 2023, highlighting the important role of maritime justice in resolving maritime disputes, maintaining maritime order, and promoting the development of the marine economy. These all reflect that China's judicial protection of the marine environment is constantly increasing. The vitality of law lies in its implementation, and the authority of law also lies in its implementation. The institutional innovation and rule improvement of the Marine Environmental Protection Law need to be implemented in the specific actions of law enforcement, supervision, and judiciary to exert its effectiveness, which needs to be demonstrated through the compliance of the whole population with the law. World Ocean Day and National Marine Awareness Day are important opportunities for marine ecological protection education and legal publicity. They play an important role in promoting the popularization and practice of the concept of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, promoting the effective implementation of marine environmental protection laws, and promoting active participation of all sectors of society in marine ecosystem protection actions. (Author Wang Jinpeng, Associate Professor at the Law School of Ocean University of China and Researcher at the Institute of Ocean Development)
Edit：Ying Ying Responsible editor：Shen Chen
Source：http://www.legaldaily.com.cn
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