China is increasingly turning to a powerful legal tool in its fight against pollution: procuratorial public interest litigation. By leveraging the possibility of legal action, prosecutors are helping break down bureaucratic barriers and strengthen environmental law enforcement. They recently gathered in Beijing to exchange experiences and discuss effective approaches. Chen Mengfei reports.
As northern China's largest freshwater lake, Nansi Lake endured years of pollution. Efforts to clean it up were stalled by jurisdictional deadlocks. A total of 53 rivers flow into Nansi Lake from four provinces, each with different environmental standards and enforcement authorities.
That changed in 2021, when China's top prosecutorial authority, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, launched a public interest litigation campaign that helped unify environmental standards across the watershed and address pollution at its source.
XU XIANGCHUN, Director-General of Public Interest Litigation Procuratorial Department, Supreme People's Procuratorate of China, "When environmental problems cross departmental and regional boundaries, no single agency or locality can solve them alone. That's where procuratorates can play a strong coordinating role, bringing different parties together."
The Nansi Lake restoration has become a landmark case in China's environmental public interest litigation system, which was rolled out nationwide in 2015.
At a recent round table in Beijing co-hosted by China's Supreme People's Procuratorate and environmental law NGO ClientEarth, senior prosecutors from Brazil, Mongolia and Vietnam gathered with legal experts from Europe, Oceania and beyond to exchange insights and discuss developments in their respective practices.
NGUYEN DUC THAI, Deputy Prosecutor General, Supreme People's Procuracy of Vietnam, "Vietnam recently launched a pilot program allowing procuratorates to bring forward civil public interest lawsuits, including in the area of environmental protection. In just over five months, procuratorates in the six pilot areas have taken on 150 environmental cases. Many incidents of pollution were stopped before further damage could be done, and the violations have since been brought to an end."
From Vietnam's Ea Súp Hạ Lake to Brazil's Amazon rainforest, the environmental challenges may vary, but the objective remains the same: ensuring environmental laws are enforced effectively.
DIMITRI DE BOER, Chief Representative, ClientEarth Beijing Office, "The idea of prosecutors to come together and talk about these systems and what works using technologies, AI satellites for their work? How do they do that? Sharing experiences, challenges? That's really important."
There was another point on which the room agreed: the ultimate objective is not litigation, but preventing environmental harm before it happens.
