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UPDATED: July 9, 2007 NO.28 JUL.12, 2007
Constitution Protects the Environment
Since the right to survive is basic for human beings, a more scientific decision-making procedure is called for to endow the citizens living in surrounding areas of the projects more rights and respect
 
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The construction of a maglev train route linking Shanghai and Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, worth over 35 billion yuan ($4.61 billion), and a 10-billion yuan ($1.32 billion) paraxylene producing factory in Xiamen, Fujian Province, were both ordered to suspend operations in May, in response to local residents' outcries for further assessments on their

environmental impacts. Cai Dingjian, professor at China University of Political Science and Law, says in an article published in Nanfang Dailyon June 19 that a deteriorating environment ruins not only nature and the ecology, but also endangers the health of people living in the area. Since the right to survive is basic for human beings, a more scientific decision-making procedure is called for to endow the citizens living in surrounding areas of the projects more rights and respect.

According to Article 26, the Constitution of the People's Republic of China (adopted in 1982), "the state protects and improves the living environment and the ecological environment, and prevents and controls pollution and other public hazards." Yet the right of environment has not been explicit in the Constitution, as we know, the administration is obliged to protect the environment, and more engagements in claims of environmental rights of citizens is called for. The Constitution is the supreme law of a nation, thus any harmful or potentially hazardous projects should be scrapped, or at least procedurally supervised by the very citizens that might be hurt by it.

Potential sufferers and other related personnel should have the right to know about and give opinions to the decision-making bodies. If the government fails to protect the people, or even damages their rights, it should take on both legal and administrative liabilities. Also it should solicit and respect public opinion. In a country ruled by law, major decisions should be made with the involvement of citizens or their representative organizations, by holding hearings or discussions on government bills.

The right of environment has been increasingly accepted as a basic right for people worldwide. After World War II, industrialization accelerated with environmental threats emerging. Heavy pollution, resources exhaustion, as well as a growing number of hazardous environmental incidents, endangered human lives, constrained economic development and destabilized social order. The right of environment was raised for the first time in the Declaration on the Human Environment made at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972, during which the participants considered the need for a common outlook and principles in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment. Then at a convention in Vienna in 1973, European environment ministers drafted a treaty, listing the environmental right as a new category of human rights, as well as a major supplement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From then on, many countries have included stipulations on the right of environment in their constitutions or environmental protection laws.

In conformity with this trend, China's Constitution cites the protection of the environment and conservation of resources as an obligation of the government. If the government of a locality puts the environment at risk in pursuit of economic development, it has not only deviated from the people-first principle of governance, but also to some extent infringes upon local residents' basic human rights.



 
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