POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1633230
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Marine Environmental Protection: Challenges, Solutions and Perspectives Volume IIView all 20 articles
China's Marine Plastic Pollution Governance Path: Focusing on the Judicial Positioning of PIL Initiated by Procuratorial Agencies
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Law，ShanDong University，QingDao，China, Qingdao, China
- 2People's Procuratorate of Shandong Province, Jinan, China
- 3King & Wood Mallesons, Jinan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Can procuratorial agencies play a key role in China's governance of marine plastic pollution (MPPG)?Within the current discussions about the legal framework of China's MPPG, courts, marine environmental regulatory authorities, procuratorial agencies, and environmental protection organizations are typically seen as the main stakeholders. However, the role of procuratorial agencies, as the statutory entity for initiating PIL in marine environmental protection, has been significantly overlooked. This raises a range of questions including how should procuratorial agencies leverage their advantages in PIL to enhance the diversity of participants in the litigation process? What inherent challenges exist in marine environmental lawsuits? What substantive and procedural obstacles will procuratorial agencies face when engaging in MPPG-related litigation? This study argues that procuratorial agencies, by fulfilling their public interest litigation (PIL) function in marine environmental protection, can effectively improve MPPG governance. The study focuses on issues such as the unclear prerequisites for initiating MPPG-related lawsuits by procuratorial agencies, the criteria for selecting diverse litigation models, and the applicability of procuratorial agencies' PIL in foreign-related cases.
Keywords: marine plastic pollution, Marine Environmental Supervision Authorities, PIL, marine environmental public interest litigation, Procuratorial Proposals
Received: 22 May 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fu, Guo, Li, Cai, Guo and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jin-Hua Guo, School of Law，ShanDong University，QingDao，China, Qingdao, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.