Risk Society Theory and Plaintiff Standing in Environmental Civil Public Interest Litigation: Examination and Framework in the Context of China’s Codification

The adoption of the Ecological and Environmental Code of the People’s Republic of China (March 2026) marks the arrival of the codification era. Building upon existing provisions in the Civil Procedure Law, the Code empowers procuratorial organs and qualified social organizations to initiate environmental civil public interest litigation against acts that harm the public ecological interests. Nevertheless, amid growing demands for preventive governance, room remains for systematic adjustment of the supporting rules governing plaintiff standing. From the perspective of risk-society theory, the preventive function of environmental law requires the scope of protected interest-in-litigation to be moderately extended from traditional actual harm to significant environmental risks. This expansion provokes reflections on the representative qualification within risk-sharing communities and the scope of actionable claims, and constitutes the internal driving force for optimising the plaintiff-standing system. Within China’s current normative system, several issues related to plaintiff standing still deserve attention. Rules on preventive public-interest litigation concerning significant risks are stipulated only in judicial interpretations and have not yet been confirmed by higher-rank legislation. Supplementary restrictions on procuratorial organs’ litigation status set out in judicial interpretations are inconsistent with provisions of the Code. Thresholds for social-organisation plaintiffs remain open to improvement. In addition, existing legislation excludes citizens from public-interest-litigation plaintiffs, leaving theoretical room for exploring limited plaintiff standing for citizens. Adopting normative analysis and case-study methods, this paper draws on risk-society theory, domestic legal norms and judicial practice to examine the legal logic and practical dilemmas of plaintiff standing in environmental civil public-interest litigation in the codification era. It develops differentiated institutional arrangements for three categories of litigants. The findings provide ideas for the implementation of supporting rules under the Code and offer theoretical references for institutional evolution oriented toward preventive governance demands in the future.