The Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China recently issued an administrative penalty decision against the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), which caused a great shock in the field of environmental public interest litigation.

After the implementation of the new Environmental Protection Law in 2015, Chinese social organizations were officially given the qualification for environmental public interest litigation, which was a significant breakthrough for China’s environmental protection cause in the judicial field. As a pioneer organization in environmental public interest litigation, CBCGDF has filed many environmental public interest lawsuits against companies that seriously pollute or destroy the environment. Many of the defendants in these cases are well-known enterprises or enterprises with significant “political backgrounds”. Despite facing tremendous pressure and threats, CBCGDF has been persistently safeguarding the public interest in the environment and has achieved remarkable results. Many of its litigation cases have been listed by the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China as typical cases or included as guiding cases, becoming “textbook” classic cases. It can be said that CBCGDF has played an influential role in promoting China’s national ecological civilization construction, especially policies, standards, and other related to ecological environmental protection.

For example, around 2015, CBCGDF filed a lawsuit against desert pollution. Unfortunately, the Intermediate People’s Court and High People’s Court of Ningxia Province in western China successively judged that “the organization does not have the qualification of the subject of environmental public interest litigation because it cannot prove that it is an environmental protection organization”, which was a very absurd reason. However, China’s Supreme People’s Court finally confirmed that CBCGDF is a qualified subject of environmental public interest litigation. Therefore, the Tengger Desert pollution case was reopened.

The second case is the Massive Electro-hunting of Earthworms, which is an ecological environment public interest litigation case. The unique significance of this case is that the object it protects is not “endangered rare species” but “biodiversity”. It has epoch-making significance and highlights China’s breakthrough in the concept of biodiversity conservation. Moreover, this case also led to the inclusion of “severe crackdown on electro-hunting of earthworms” in the Central No. 1 Document for 2023.

For example, CBCGDF has filed environmental public interest lawsuits against many state-owned enterprises and central enterprises, such as The Aluminum Corp of China (CHALCO) Guizhou branch, which caused environmental damage to the village’s houses and ground subsidence, National Power Investment Group Co., Ltd., which occupied and destroyed grasslands, the Yalong River Basin Hydropower Development Co., Ltd., which destroyed the habitat of five-leaved maple, and the Shandong Changyi Petrochemical Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China National Chemical Corporation, which sold substandard diesel fuel in violation of regulations. The organization also filed a series of major cases that influenced national economy and people’s livelihood, such as the Changzhou toxic soil case, the toxic running track case in school, and the Dunhuang deforestation case in Gansu Province.

Reporter: Wendy

Checked by YJ

Contact: V10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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