Coordination Between Administrative Oversight and Public Interest Litigation in Preventive Environmental Risk Management: A Perspective Based on Public-private Law Cooperation

The “Ecological Environment Code” does not systematically address the relationship and connection between the legal system for preventive environmental risk management, which blurs the structure of the code. The contrast between the practical reasoning of preventive civil public interest litigation and the lack of norms for preventive administrative public interest litigation reflects the need for a systematic approach to preventive environmental risk management. China’s environmental risk governance follows a decentralized public-private law model, which has inherent flaws in terms of systematization and coordination, making it difficult to create a joint force for preventive governance. A public-private law cooperation model for environmental risk governance, using standardizable theoretical types of environmental risks to match different preventive governance tools, helps form a new orderly environmental protection pattern for risk management. Preventive environmental risk governance in China should establish a progressive structure based on administrative supervision, supplemented by public interest litigation. The connection between administrative supervision and public interest litigation can be specifically developed based on different types of litigation, such as the normative approach of preventive public interest litigation, the qualifications of connected subjects, the expansion of case clue sources, adjustment of proof responsibility rules, involvement of expert assistants in litigation, and strengthened application of prohibition orders, all of which help achieve the goal of preventive environmental risk protection.