An empirical examination of liability for ecological environment restoration in the context of the Civil Code of China

In environmental tort lawsuits, China has been overly focused on "punishing" violators and has neglected the value of ecological environment restoration. The Article 1234 of Civil Code of China in 2021 has provided an important institutional guideline for the restoration of ecological environment and sustainable development in China. This paper analyzes 512 cases of ecological environment restoration liability and identifies five challenges in the judicial context: the lack of sound legal regulation, the lack of liability allocation, the mismatch of liability subjects, the difficulty of identifying damage facts, and the difficulty of effective implementation of restoration. In the face of these difficulties, countries that attach importance to ecological environment restoration, such as the United States, Germany and Japan, have provided experience that can be drawn on for China's ecological environment restoration liability. Based on foreign experience, China's liability for ecological environment restoration should be improved in the following aspects: first, to improve the legal system from basic laws and specific laws; second, to expand the scope of subjects from both litigation request subjects and liability subjects; third, to improve the identification and assessment mechanism and innovate the identification and assessment procedures in accordance with China's national conditions; fourth, to determine the restoration methods based on the criterion of "utilization value and the differences in the objects. The ultimate goal is to help China's Civil Code to be better applied judicially on the one hand, and to contribute to the world ecological protection on the other.