Countermeasures for the difficulty of protecting Farmers' Rights in Rural Environmental pollution

While the overall development of rural areas is improving, the ecological environment of many rural areas has been seriously damaged. As the direct victim of rural environmental pollution, it is difficult for farmers to safeguard their environmental rights. Therefore, on the basis of revealing the serious harm caused by rural environmental pollution, this paper analyzes the difficulty of farmers' rights protection and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures.

I. the serious harm of environmental pollution in rural areas

The interest mechanism of market economy permeates every corner of society with irresistible force. To develop the rural economy and farmers to get rich, the development of township enterprises has become the first choice. In this process, some polluting enterprises take the opportunity to settle down and produce in many remote villages. As rural pollution is not as easy to attract people's attention as urban pollution, so by the time it is discovered and paid attention to, the problem is often very serious.

1. Water pollution leads to ecological destruction, resulting in a terrible "cancer village" phenomenon.

With the transfer of some polluting enterprises to rural areas, the waste water containing harmful substances discharged by highly polluting enterprises such as electroplating mills, paper mills and electroplating factories is directly discharged into streams and rivers without treatment, coupled with the backward infrastructure in rural areas. without a set of perfect sewage, drainage and garbage cleaning system, the ecology of rural areas has been damaged to varying degrees, and the ecological imbalance is becoming more and more serious. The pollution of water resources is the source of many diseases, which has caused serious infringement on the basic rights such as the life and health of farmers in rural areas. In some areas with serious pollution, there are even "ecological refugees". What is particularly serious is that, according to relevant statistics, the number of cancer villages in China has exceeded 247, covering 27 provinces, mainly in the eastern coastal provinces with rapid economic development. the main reason is the discharge of pollution wastewater produced by nearby chemical factories, printing and dyeing mills, paper mills and other enterprises. According to the World Bank, Chinese farmers are nearly four times as likely to die from liver cancer and twice as likely to die from stomach cancer.

2. Heavy metal pollution in soil threatens food security in rural areas.

For thousands of years, farming has been the traditional and largest industry of farmers in China, but now the farmland on which farmers depend for a living has been polluted by heavy metals, and the current situation is "worrying". Since 2009, more than 30 major heavy metal pollution incidents have occurred in China, including cadmium pollution in Liuyang, Hunan, thallium in the south of Zhongjinling, lead pollution in Neijiang, Sichuan, arsenic pollution in Linyi, Shandong, dam break in Zijin Mining, Fujian, etc., which are shocking. The "cadmium rice" incident in Guangdong in 2013 caused a public outcry and once again raised the problem of heavy metal pollution in farmland. Luo Xiwen, Chinese academician of engineering, revealed at the 45th special report meeting of the Guangdong Association of Science and Technology Forum: 300 million mu of arable land in China is polluted by heavy metals, accounting for 1/6 of the total farmland in the country. According to the statistics of the national sewage irrigation regional survey conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture, among the 1.4 million hectares of polluted irrigation areas, the land area polluted by heavy metals accounts for 64.8% of the farmland irrigated area, and 12 million tons of grain is contaminated by heavy metals every year, resulting in direct economic losses of more than 20 billion yuan. China is a large agricultural country, the quality of rural food not only directly affects the stability of rural areas, but also affects the national food security.

3. Rural environmental pollution causes mass incidents and affects social stability.

The discharge of pollution by enterprises leads to pollution, and the effect of protecting farmers' rights is limited, so it is easy to take group "trouble". When the government sends out the police to maintain order, it will lead to conflicts between the police and the people and other mass incidents. In 2005, two typical mass incidents occurred in Zhejiang Province, namely, farmers in Xushui Town of Dongyang City protested against the serious pollution by local chemical enterprises, and more than 10,000 farmers in Xinchang County protested against the environmental pollution caused by Beijing New Pharmaceutical Industry. In 2007, a typical incident of sewage discharge by Taifu Paper Co., Ltd. occurred in Baotang Town, Cenxi City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region. Environmental problems are not only civil issues, but also political problems, which have a great impact on social stability. In recent years, the increasing number of group incidents caused by environmental problems has become a major problem that causes social contradictions, affects the economy and restricts social development.

No other country in the world is facing such serious environmental pollution. Recently, qu Geping, the first director of the State Environmental Protection Agency, said that if we do not eliminate environmental pollution and protect the ecological environment, we will perish the party and the country. Rural environmental problems have to be taken seriously, such as cancer villages caused by water pollution, cadmium rice caused by soil pollution and other incidents, all of which are shocking.

Second, the performance of farmers' difficulties in safeguarding their environmental rights.

At the present stage, the main ways of protecting farmers' environmental rights in our country are litigation and non-litigation. Litigation means that the subjects whose environmental rights and interests are damaged use legal means to claim their legitimate rights and interests, including civil litigation, criminal litigation and administrative litigation. Non-litigation means in addition to litigation channels, including petitions, mediation, reconciliation, consultation, environmental rights and interests maintenance consultation, media information support and other means.

1. It is difficult to safeguard the rights through litigation.

For the villagers, if they want to seek judicial relief, they often appeal to the people's court by way of civil litigation, but this road is not easy for the villagers. 1) it is difficult to collect evidence. Evidence is the cornerstone of litigation and plays an extremely important role in the outcome of litigation. Due to their own cultural quality and other factors, farmers usually do not consciously collect evidence of environmental pollution. The collection of environmental pollution evidence sometimes requires the use of scientific and technological means, which is beyond the manual ability of ordinary people, coupled with the economic cost of collecting evidence, which can easily lead farmers to give up judicial channels because they are unable to provide evidence. 2) it is difficult to file a case. Most of the township enterprises are the pillar enterprises of the local government, which play an important role in the local economic development, so they are valued and protected by the local government, and it is easy to intervene in the administration of justice. When farmers sue to the court because of environmental pollution and disputes arising from township enterprises, in the filing stage, some courts will deal with farmers' rights protection by defective evidence of the plaintiff or by way of delay, and curb farmers' rights protection at the filing stage. 3) it is difficult to do justice. Compared with the villagers, the enterprise obviously has more strength and social ability. when the environmental litigation case is filed, the defendant enterprise will naturally rely on its own strength to exert pressure on the court through various ways. urge yourself to be in a relatively favorable position in the process of playing with the interests of farmers in order to damage the interests of farmers in exchange for the development of enterprises. In addition, a very small number of judges value politics over the law and protect themselves, making it difficult to protect the environmental rights and interests of farmers. 4) it is difficult to administer justice. In the environmental pollution dispute litigation, even if the farmers win the case, the enforcement of the judgment is still a problem. Many enterprises refuse to pay compensation and take measures such as transferring property and applying for bankruptcy to evade judicial enforcement. after the court decision comes into effect, the enterprise will have no enforceable property, which affects the confidence and choice of many farmers to take the road of litigation.

2. It is difficult to safeguard rights through non-litigation channels.

Article 41, paragraph 2, of the Environmental Protection Law stipulates: "disputes over liability and the amount of compensation may, at the request of the parties, be dealt with by the competent administrative department of environmental protection or other departments exercising the power of environmental supervision and administration in accordance with the provisions of the law; if the party is not satisfied with the decision, he may bring a suit in a people's court. The party concerned may also directly bring a suit in a people's court. " It can be seen that the law is also a "two-track" relief mechanism that advocates mediation and litigation.

Litigation is time-consuming and laborious, which will prompt villagers to directly look for polluting enterprises or communicate with the infringers through the local government to demand compensation after the infringement of their rights. However, in the face of polluting enterprises, the victims are obviously vulnerable. Due to the imperfect mediation system in our country, the mediation of environmental tort can reduce the litigation burden of the victims and improve the judicial efficiency, but it can not avoid the unequal status of the two sides because the victims are in a weak position. The financial strength of the victims is a hundred times stronger than its enterprises, enterprises can obtain more relevant legal information from legal advisers. On the other hand, the victims can only rely on their limited level of knowledge to negotiate with the enterprise alone without legal aid. In the case of the victims suffering from serious illness, and these patients are often poor families, in order to get a timely compensation, often compromise, polluters will take advantage of this weakness to minimize the amount of compensation. In some specific cases, if the polluting enterprise is very poor or even on the verge of bankruptcy, or has gone bankrupt, it is impossible for the victim to make a claim. It can be seen that under the current legal system of our country, it is not easy for villagers to solve the problem through the simplest negotiation and mediation.

III. The reasons why it is difficult for farmers to safeguard their environmental rights.

In the litigation process of protecting farmers' environmental rights, there are not only farmers' own reasons, but also restricted by other objective factors.

1. The subjective reasons why it is difficult for farmers to safeguard their environmental rights.

Farmers' awareness of safeguarding their rights is weak. Generally speaking, as a vulnerable group in the society, farmers have a low level of education and receive less knowledge of environmental protection and law. At present, with the rapid development of rural economy in many places, the living standard of farmers has improved significantly, but the education level of farmers is still low, and farmers' awareness of environmental protection is still weak. When the majority of rural villagers are protecting their own rights and interests, it is difficult to form the initiative and sustainability of environmental protection, and it is difficult for farmers' interests to be properly protected.

The social ability of farmers is limited. The plaintiffs in environmental pollution cases are mostly vulnerable farmers, who do not have sufficient professional knowledge and sufficient economic strength to hire relevant lawyers to provide help, while the polluting enterprises as defendants have strong economic strength. It has the funds, talents and expertise needed for litigation, which also puts the plaintiff in a disadvantageous position in litigation. Environmental rights protection is a high-cost action, the collection and identification of evidence is very difficult, and causality is even more difficult to prove. When the conditions for collecting evidence are met, the amount of expected compensation determines whether they take the litigation route or not. For farmers, economic cost is undoubtedly a major obstacle to environmental rights protection, which restricts farmers' rights protection, so many farmers give up the legal approach.

2. The objective reasons why it is difficult for farmers to safeguard their environmental rights.

(1) the dislocation of local government's thinking on development and environment. In order to pursue political achievements, and it is not easy to introduce enterprises that can not only promote economic growth but also maintain the environment, local government officials are more likely to sacrifice the environment between the dilemma between the rapid development of the local economy and environmental protection. First of all, the environmental issue has become a topic of great concern to the government, the public and social organizations. People have recognized the importance of environmental value, but there are still differences and conflicts around development and environmental protection, such as the conflict between the supremacy of local government GDP and farmers' environmental interests, and the conflict between the economic benefits of enterprises and the living environment of farmers. Secondly, the existence of urban-rural dual economic structure in China not only causes the widening gap between the rich and the poor between urban and rural areas, the imbalance of regional development, but also causes the imbalance of urban and rural environmental protection. For a long time, it has been mentioned that environmental protection mainly considers urban and industrial pollution, ignoring the treatment of environmental pollution in rural areas. Thirdly, the government's environmental protection responsibility assessment mechanism is not perfect, and the government's environmental responsibility investigation system is not perfect. The pursuit of economic growth directly leads to the government's neglect of environmental protection policies and the desalination of farmers' environmental rights.

(2) Environmental law enforcement is subject to local control. The local government's pursuit of political achievement not only directly leads to the development idea of sacrificing the environment, but also interferes and suppresses the environmental law enforcement. Our country has formed unified legal norms of environmental protection, but the enforcement of these norms by local governments is not unified, resulting in different conditions of environmental pollution. When an environmental accident occurs, the local government hides people's eyes in order to protect these high-pollution taxpayers, while the environmental protection department cannot effectively implement the relevant laws and regulations under the restraint of the local government, except for charging a little sewage fee. Its main function is to become the "resolution department" of the local government when environmental pollution incidents occur, such as making minor matters, saying lies such as "little impact on the environment", and some environmental protection bureaus have become "pollution protection bureaus". In recent years, many rural environmental pollution cases are not investigated and dealt with by government environmental protection departments, or even first discovered by environmental protection departments, many of which are reported by villagers and then exposed by the media.