BEIJING NO 4 INTERMEDIATE People's Court recently issued a preliminary injunction ordering an enterprise that is being sued for polluting the environment to halt production, which is China's first such order. Hebnews.cn comments:

In certain cases, a court issues a preliminary injunction before making its ruling when it finds the action of one of the parties involved might violate others' legal rights and interests. Such measures are common in domestic violence and intellectual property rights cases, and they are aimed at preventing further harm.

Such injunctions are also necessary in environmental cases because prevention is more effective than after-damage recovery and restoration efforts.

There used to be a dilemma in environmental cases. When a polluting company was sued, the judiciary would intervene but the judicial process would usually take quite a long time－sometimes years. The polluting company would lose, but during the time before the court issued its final ruling and implemented it, the company would continue polluting. The preventive injunction the Beijing-based court has issued is a way to end this dilemma.

The case is also significant because it is a public-interest litigation in which the local procuratorate is suing the polluting enterprise. Previously, a polluting company would not be taken to court because there was no immediate victim to instigate the litigation. Public interest litigations such as this one have solved this problem.

China is making huge progress in environmental legislation and popularizing the importance of environmental protection. We hope more preliminary injunctions will be issued in similar cases to help protect the environment before it is too late.