More and more serious water pollution in the Chinese judicial practice has attracted great attentions. In recent years courts across China had numerous environmental public litigation cases, most of which related to water pollution. In order to solve legal issues of water pollution, since may 13th 2010, "the International Conference for Water Pollution in the public interest” co-sponsored by the School of Law of SYSU and the China Maritime Law Association Maritime Professional Committee, and assisted by the Vermont Law School, and United States Agency for International Development was held in Guangzhou.
On behalf of the Supreme People’s Court, Sun Youhai, Deputy-director of research office of the Supreme People’s Court, congratulated to the research conference. It was said that Chinese courts should pay more attention to environmental pollution cases and legal issues related to the research. He believed that public interest litigation existing in china has more legal obstacles, but the Supreme People’s Court also raised that the dynamic administration of justice should be held, the law should be revised and improved to solve environmental problems of the new legal requirements.
There were three themes in the morning seminar, and the first was a report titled "The United States judicial system and the Ministry of Justice in environmental law enforcement role and status", delivered by Robert Dalell, Deputy-attorney-general of the department of justice of USA, presenting the development of U.S. environmental law, environmental law enforcement responsibilities of the Ministry of Justice. Second, Rao Shuqing, Judge of Higher People's Court of Guangdong province had a report named “analysis and solution of Legal Problems hearing the case of oil pollution”, which focusing on the characters of the dispute case that Guangzhou Maritime Court accepted the 19 ships of damages caused by pollution. At last Li Zhiping, Deputy-dean of the school of law of SYSU and Zhan Simin, Vice-president of Guangzhou Maritime Court gave a report titled "Public Interest Litigation cases in Guangdong water pollution analysis" together. It was a systematic analysis of public interest litigation cases received by Guangzhou Maritime Court from 1991 to 2009, in which some suggestions were also provided.
In the afternoon, the second team had been around legal issues, such as the legal basis for public interest litigation, the plaintiff’s qualifications, procedures, rules and oil pollution clean-up in legal issues. After the public speeches, participants questioned enthusiastically and had a lively interaction. In the seminar all aspects of Public Interest Litigation had been deeply discussed which was of significance to improve the management of water pollution and promote the public interest litigation system of water pollution.
