China News Service, Beijing, February 12. "The positioning of public interest litigation is not to win or lose in court, but to focus on the protection of public interests."
On February 11, Zhang Xueqiao, the deputy chief prosecutor of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, who had just returned to Beijing from the "South Four Lakes Project" case handling site in Shandong, walked into the interview room of Chinanews.com.
Talking about this major environmental public interest litigation case, which is called "four lakes suffocating four provinces", Zhang Xueqiao said that public interest litigation is to dare to bite "hard bones".
Why did the Supreme Prosecutor "target" Nansi Lake?
——Environmental public interest litigation has gnawed on the "hard bones"
Nansi Lake is the largest freshwater lake in northern China. Its watershed involves 34 counties and cities in 4 provinces, carrying various functions such as flood regulation and water storage, South-to-North water transfer, development of aquatic products, and shipping and transportation.
However, in recent years, this lake has been seriously polluted and has become the "soy sauce lake" in the mouths of the people along the lake.
Because of the large number of areas involved and the difficulty of governance, in March last year, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment suggested to the Supreme People's Procuratorate to solve the pollution problem of Nansi Lake by handling public interest litigation cases.
On April 8 of that year, the Supreme Procurator took action and directly initiated the public interest procuratorial filing procedure for the damage to the ecological environment in the Nansi Lake Basin. More than 200 prosecutors from the four-level procuratorial organs of Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Henan have formed a case-handling team to handle the "South Four Lakes Project" in an integrated case-handling manner.
This was also rated as the top ten legal supervision cases in 2021 by the media.
Why did the Supreme Prosecutor focus on the "South Four Lakes"?
According to Zhang Xueqiao, this is first because the pollution of Nansi Lake has too great an impact on the promotion of major national strategies.
"This is an important channel for the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and an important channel for the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The Yangtze River water reaches Shandong through the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and then all the way to Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, including Baiyangdian, Hebei. It can be said to ensure the clarity of this water area. , it is also related to the construction of the Xiongan New Area."
In addition to the strategic significance of the lake itself, the reason why Nansi Lake was targeted by the Supreme Court lies in the difficulty of environmental governance in this lake area.
"Pollution is in the water, and the root is on the shore." Zhang Xueqiao introduced that the Nansi Lake Basin involves 34 counties and urban areas in 4 provinces, 8 cities, and the root cause of the difficulty in governance lies in the lack of uniform law enforcement standards across the basin, the different lines of upstream and downstream, and the difference between the left and right banks. At the same time, "Who will handle the four provinces is better? Who can unify the environmental law enforcement standards through case handling? The highest detection is the most appropriate."
Zhang Xueqiao said that the procuratorial organs carry out public interest litigation to adhere to the "big country", focus on "governance difficulties", and keep an eye on the "hard bones" in ecological environmental governance. At present, the most difficult thing is cross-regional environmental governance.
Zhang Xueqiao, Deputy Prosecutor-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, was a guest on Chinanews.com to talk about how to keep green waters and green mountains in environmental public interest litigation.
Photo by China News Service reporter Li Peiyun
Solving the "dilemma" between ecology and development
——Public interest litigation is not about winning or losing, but about protecting the public interest
The "South Four Lakes Project" 300 days has achieved remarkable results in the environmental governance of the basin.
According to Zhang Xueqiao's introduction, in the past 300 days, the severely black and odorous water body in the Nansi Lake area has dropped from 15% to 10%, and the moderately black and odorous water body has dropped from 53% to 32%.
Among the four types of pollution, including industrial pollution, domestic pollution, agricultural pollution, and ship pollution, the current standards for the triple pollution have been unified.
The Nansi Lake watershed involves many cities and counties and has a high population density. For a long time, "relying on the lake to eat the lake" has been the production and lifestyle of the people along the lake.
How to balance the relationship between ecology and development is another major dilemma in the governance of Nansi Lake, and it is also a common problem encountered by China's environmental public interest litigation.
"Ecological priority, green development, and maintaining clear waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets." Zhang Xueqiao said that in environmental public interest litigation, the procuratorial organs should coordinate the forces of all parties to resolve the interests of all parties.
"For example, the ecological environment department has imposed a suspension of production, but it cannot be imposed. Enterprises need to produce, people need employment, and the economy needs to develop. How to let enterprises find another piece of land to continue production, which involves the natural resources department, this coordination process That's what prosecutors do."
Zhang Xueqiao said that the positioning of public interest litigation is not to win or lose in court, but to focus on the protection of public interests, while environmental public interest litigation should not only protect the ecological environment, but also protect the vital interests of the people, so as to achieve a win-win situation.
Regarding China's environmental public interest litigation practice, Zhang Xueqiao said that the procuratorial organs help the ecological environment department to gnaw away the "hard bones" by handling environmental public interest litigation. This institutional advantage has been highly appraised by prosecutors in many Western countries.
"The procuratorial organ has filed an environmental public interest lawsuit. This is a system that promotes the modernization of the country's governance system and governance capacity. It is also the first of its kind in China in the world." , we propose a Chinese solution.
Zhang Xueqiao, Deputy Prosecutor-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, was a guest on Chinanews.com to talk about how to keep green waters and green mountains in environmental public interest litigation.
Photo by China News Service reporter Li Peiyun
The "eye" of the public and the "eye" of technology
——Any judicial activity should be relegated to the sovereignty of the people
In the 300-day "South Four Lakes Project", the Supreme People's Procuratorate not only invested heavily, but also pushed for an open, transparent and sunny case handling.
On February 10, a "cloud supervisor" focusing on the governance of Nansi Lake was presented in the form of a live webcast. The Supreme People's Procuratorate conducted the whole process of the procuratorial hearing on the "Nansi Lake Project" held in Jinan, Shandong through online platforms such as China News Network. live streaming.
Preliminary statistics show that the total number of viewers of the live video of this hearing has exceeded 10 million, and many netizens sighed: "The last time the cloud supervisor participated in such a 'fire' was to watch Huoshenshan Hospital two years ago."
Regarding the online live broadcast to supervise the case handling process, Zhang Xueqiao said that public interest litigation, as its name implies, is a lawsuit to protect the public interest.
"No matter what kind of judicial activities the judiciary is engaged in, it should return the sovereignty to the people and let the people participate in the justice." Zhang Xueqiao said.
In order to make the case handling more accurate and fair, the Supreme People's Procuratorate is not only good at borrowing the "eye" of the public, but also good at using the "eye" of technology.
In the process of handling the "Nansi Lake Project", high-tech such as satellite remote sensing, drones, and big data were used.
Talking about using technology to empower public interest litigation, Zhang Xueqiao said that public interest litigation prosecution involves a wide range of fields. If you want to do good work, you must first sharpen your tools. In the future, in handling more cases of personal information protection, food safety, etc. The technical support ability of the company must be the direction of efforts.
Regarding the public interest litigation procuratorial system that has been in place for nearly five years, Zhang Xueqiao said, "There is still a long way to go in the future, but for the interests of the people and relying on the strength of the people, this is an unswerving principle and direction." (End)