Judiciary's conservation efforts help cut environmental cases

Thanks to stronger judicial efforts in environmental protection, the number of relevant cases in China has dropped since 2021, said the Supreme People's Court.

The country's top court showed the trend on Thursday, the National Ecology Day, saying that Chinese courts concluded 232,000 environmental cases in 2023, down 5.8 percent year-on-year.

Among the cases, a total of 5,386 criminal cases involved pollution last year, a decrease of 11.5 percent compared with the previous year, the top court said.

"The decline has not only demonstrated our judicial determination and endeavor in the environmental conservation, but also indicated that the public’s legal awareness in the environmental protection has been enhanced," it added.

According to data provided by the top court, courts nationwide concluded more than 1.9 million environmental cases from 2014 to 2023, covering various aspects of the field, including sewage control, air pollution prevention, biodiversity conservation and clean energy.

In the face of such a big number of environment lawsuits, courts across the country have also improved the quality of the case hearings by establishing specialized teams and increasing exchanges with environmental academies, the top court said.

The number of environmental adjudication divisions has increased to 2,813 last year from 134 in 2014, giving it the world’s most intensive and complete such judicial system, it added.

In addition, since 2014, the top court has formulated and revised 21 judicial interpretations related to environment, with issuance of 22 legal guidelines to help judges apply the law more accurately and improve the efficiency of relevant case handling.