Modern environmental philosophy is a new type of philosophy for humans re-examining the relationship between man and nature and provides the value guidance for modern environmental law. China’s environmental crime legislation has gone through the exploration period, establishment period, and optimization period. The environmental philosophy behind this is worth discussing and determines the direction China will take environmental crime in the future and whether China’s environmental strategy can really be implemented. At present, the disputes about the environmental philosophy of environmental crime in China are mainly reflected in the contention between anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and eco-anthropocentrism. There are radical risks of pure human centrism or pure ecological centrism, and these two theories struggle to serve as a value basis for environmental crime legislation. Although eco-anthropocentrism seems to be comprehensive, it is actually ambiguous, and it is still difficult to deal with the conflict between people and nature. In recent years, China has continuously emphasized the construction of ecological civilization construction and written this into the constitution. Therefore, in the environmental philosophy issues of environmental crimes in China, we should consider absorbing the advantages of anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and eco-anthropocentrism, while taking the original Chinese ecological civilization philosophy as the value foundation.

Effective global environmental governance is the only viable way to solve the human environmental crisis. For a long time, China has been an active promoter and contributor to the global environmental governance system. In recent years, China has enhanced the penalty intensity of environmental crimes, the environmental pollution crimes in particular, and received good results in order to better realize the construction of ecological civilization and better fulfill the emission reduction targets of international environmental treaties. The deterioration of China’s environmental crisis in the past and the lack of deterrent effect of China’s environmental laws are closely related to the ineffective punishment of environmental crimes. In order to better promote environmental protection careers, China’s environmental crimes still need to be continuously optimized in terms of adding charges, legislative models and restorative justice.

In the early 1990s, China introduced into its civil legal system the punitive damages system derived from the Anglo-American legal tradition, marking a significant legislative breakthrough among civil law countries. Currently, China is one of the countries with the greatest pressure to reduce emissions in the world, and more effective legal tools are needed for environmental governance. Therefore, in China’s Civil Code, which came into effect in January 2021, punitive damages for environmental torts were established, enabling the imposition of additional compensation for severe environmental pollution and ecological damage incidents and thus enhancing the deterrent effect of environmental laws. The construction of punitive damages for environmental torts in China has significant positive implications, but the provisions of the system are not perfect, leading to some confusion in its judicial practice. The United States has a very systematic and mature experience in the construction of punitive damages for environmental torts, which is worthy of reference for China. From a comparative research perspective, China’s punitive damages for environmental torts should particularly focus on issues such as expanding its scope of application, clarifying rules for determining compensation amounts, addressing issues of concurrent liability and optimizing related legislation.

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On September 20 2024 China and Japan reached four consensuses on the discharge of Fukushima ALPS-treated water into the sea. This not only eased the tense trade relations between the two states but also provided an important opportunity to build a new type of marine environmental protection cooperation in Northeast Asia. In fact there are multiple environmental protection communication mechanisms in Northeast Asia but there is a lack of truly binding regional environmental protection legal frameworks such as the Espoo Convention the Aarhus Convention. We should take advantage of this opportunity to reach a consensus on cooperation between China and Japan on the discharge of Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the sea combine the actual situation between states in Northeast Asia learn from improve the relatively mature cross-border environmental protection mechanism in Europe rely on the existing regional environmental protection cooperation mechanism available in Northeast Asia to improve upgrade it promote the construction of a new Northeast Asian marine environmental protection legal mechanism contribute Northeast Asian wisdom examples to the world’s marine environmental protection cause.