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 modern society, law is one of the most important means of risk prevention and control. Under the challenge of ecological and environmental risks, China’s legal governance experience provides important historical experience and theoretical samples for other countries. Faced with problems, such as the difficulty of eliminating risks, risk decisions themselves bring risks, and the huge social cost of risk response, the social system theory can provide novel and new ideas for the cognition and response of environmental risks. Combining the experience of judicial practice with social theory, especially Niklas Luhmann’s doctrine of the risk/danger dichotomy, a clearer functional orientation can be given to judicial powers based on risk communication and risk attribution. By reviewing the ecological judicial practices in China, Germany, and other countries, the role of the legal system in stabilizing the normative expectations of the whole of society can be summarized, which will provide a reference for the risk response and legal governance of the global ecological environment.

There are two options for environmental tort remedy in China: resorting to environmental administration or environmental justice, with an ongoing debate over which of the two should lead. Firstly, it compares the structure of China’s environmental tort remedy system and the two types of power: administrative power and judicial power, concluding that administrative power is dominant. Then, it argues for the indispensability of judicial power, attempts to find a clear boundary between the two sides, and justifies their mutual division of labor and collaboration. Through sufficient demonstration, it clarifies why the dominant position of environmental administrative power must be guaranteed. Then, it summarizes the experience of other countries and the practice of environmental protection in China; and provides three innovative paths of the future environmental rights remedy system. These three aspects are setting up a review procedure for administrative priority judgment before filing an environmental lawsuit, establishing the independent position of experts in environmental litigation, advocating a risk communication mechanism other than litigation, and providing a richer institutional guarantee for the relief of environmental rights.