G. Legal Guarantee to Promote Chinese Enterprises to Take Environmental and Social Responsibilities

1. Improve environmental laws   Complying with environmental laws, especially mandatory legal norms, is the cornerstone for enterprises to fulfill their environmental and social responsibilities. From the perspective of the multi-level nature of corporate environmental and social responsibility, the responsibility required by mandatory legal norms is the lowest level of corporate environmental and social responsibility. Only when the mandatory legal norms are improved and strictly enforced can enterprises be able to undertake it. Environmental and social responsibility at a higher level. In other words, if an enterprise is unwilling to accept even the mandatory burden, it is enough to show that its awareness of environmental protection is very weak, and it is impossible to truly undertake environmental and social responsibilities beyond the mandatory provisions of the law. In terms of the pressure faced by enterprises, although the actions of consumers and other stakeholders have an impact on corporate behavior, if the result of a company's failure to fulfill its environmental and social responsibilities is only moral condemnation, the impact will be minimal. Only when the coercive force of the state intervenes, will enterprises have greater enthusiasm to protect the environment because they may face sanctions from public power.

   However, there are still many problems in the implementation of environmental laws in my country, resulting in environmental laws not being strictly observed. Environmental legislation is abstract, with principles but no specific behavior patterns, or behavior patterns without legal consequences; administrative penalties are unreasonably designed, and the cost of violations is seriously low; judicial relief procedures are imperfect, making it difficult for pollution victims to realize their right to sue. In response to the above situations, my country must improve environmental laws, strengthen the construction of law enforcement agencies, and force enterprises to internalize environmental costs, so as to create a fair and sound legal environment for enterprises to undertake environmental and social responsibilities, and it is also an important means to promote equal competition among enterprises.

2. Refinement of various guiding incentive systems

   When asking enterprises to fulfill their environmental and social responsibilities, it does not deny the nature of enterprises to pursue profits and the behavior of enterprises to seek profits and avoid disadvantages. If a business engages in environmentally friendly behavior that may increase the cost of a product or service, it is only fair to introduce an incentive system that allows the business to gain some additional benefit, such as tax cuts or financial aid. However, at present, some of these systems in my country are still blank, and some have rules in principle, but they cannot be implemented without detailed implementation rules. Therefore, it is urgent to improve and refine various guiding and stimulating systems.

    For example, Article 20 of the "Cleaner Production Promotion Law" stipulates: "The design of products and packaging shall consider their impact on human health and the environment in the life cycle, and give priority to non-toxic, harmless, easily degradable or easy recycling. This kind of regulation with behavioral patterns but no legal consequences obviously has little impact on the behavior of enterprises. If an enterprise is faced with a lower-cost but less environmentally friendly solution and a higher-cost but environment-friendly solution The former obviously has factors to reduce cost pressure, while the latter has no other impact on enterprises except to increase costs. However, if the rules can be refined, and certain material or honorary rewards are given to enterprises that give priority to non-toxic, harmless, easily degradable or easy-to-recycle solutions, it will greatly promote the environmental protection work of enterprises.

3. . Improve various auxiliary systems

The behavior of stakeholders can have a huge impact on the enterprise, but this impact is preconditions. First of all, stakeholders must be able to accurately grasp the environmental information of the enterprise in order to make the right choice; secondly, the construction of stakeholders themselves will also restrict the exertion of their influence, if they cannot reach a certain scale, they will be very difficult to achieve. Hard to be effective. These all require the improvement and improvement of relevant auxiliary systems, especially the information disclosure system, the certification system, and the relevant legal systems for the construction of environmental protection NGOs.

my country's current information disclosure system for enterprises is the "Environmental Information Disclosure Measures (Trial)", which has already been implemented, but this regulation is only a mandatory requirement for serious polluting enterprises that exceed the standard discharge pollutants or exceed the prescribed limit of total pollutant discharge to disclose enterprises. environmental information, and the environmental information required to be disclosed is not detailed enough. As a consumer who is willing to choose environmentally friendly products, if he wants to know whether the production process of the enterprise adopts an environmentally friendly production method, he will fail to be a "green consumer" because he cannot obtain accurate information. Another example is the environmental standard system certification system. Whether it adopts the standards of the International Organization for Standardization or the standards of the government or other organizations, there must be a standardized system to make the certification authentic, reliable and prestige. As for the environmental protection organization, the promotion of its establishment and the operation of the organization also need legal support. These are all stakeholders.

[Case 1] Li, a middle school student in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, lived in the west living area of a petrochemical refinery from birth to October 1989. To the south of the residence is a liquefied gas canning station, which often leaks gas; to the east is an engineering team that manufactures pressure vessels. The team mainly conducts radiographic inspections on site and paints the containers; to the north is the production unit of an oil refinery; to the northwest On the side is the refinery flare, which emits flare gas containing harmful substances. From November 1989 to July 1997, Mr. Li lived in the east living area of the refinery. To the east of the residence is the unsealed area of the refinery sewage, and to the north is the coking unit. On New Year's Eve in 2004, Li was diagnosed with acute mixed leukemia. His family believed that it was caused by the pollution of the surrounding environment. When the two sides negotiated many times to no avail, Li took the refinery to court. In the complaint, Li said: the refinery should be liable for compensation for his personal injury; he requested the court to order the unit to pay 540,000 yuan for medical expenses already spent, 150,000 yuan for follow-up medical expenses, 260,000 yuan for spiritual comfort, and 260,000 yuan for transportation expenses. , 50,000 yuan for accommodation and hospital meals, totaling 1 million yuan.

  [Case 2] A foreign company intends to set up a wholly-owned factory in a city in southern my country to produce various plastic toys, with an investment of 16 million US dollars and 1,200 employees. The products sell well in the international market. However, after the company started official production, the casting workshop produced stench and poisonous gas, which was discharged into the atmosphere without treatment, choking the throat and nose, making it difficult for people to breathe. irritating. In this regard, the local environmental protection department filed a lawsuit with the local people's court after repeatedly urging the company to control the pollution and issued a deadline for control notices, requiring the polluting company to bear the corresponding legal responsibility.