2022.07.06
JunHe sincerely welcomes Ms. Kou Chunyan as counsel to the Chengdu office.
Ms. Kou specialises in environmental law. She has worked as legal counsel in the areas of environmental compliance consulting and review, the resolution of disputes over environmental resource cases, environmental equity transactions, green financing and the entire legal process surrounding environmental infrastructure.
Ms. Kou graduated from the School of Administrative Law at the Northwest University of Political Science and Law (NWUPL) and received her master’s degree in constitution and administrative law. She has worked for more than ten years in the legal departments of many provincial and municipal environmental protection bodies, and has long been engaged in the legislative, law enforcement, judicial and research work surrounding environmental protection. Currently, she is the deputy secretary general of the Institute of Ecology and Environment Policy and Legal Research of Sichuan Province, vice president of the Sichuan Tianfu Environmental Damage Forensic Appraisal Institute, a member of the Special Committee of Energy, Environment and Resources of Sichuan Lawyers Association, and the deputy director of the Public Lawyers and Corporate Lawyers Committee of the Sichuan Lawyers Association. Ms. Kou is the environmental resources judicial expert of the Second Court of the Chengdu Railway Transport Intermediate People’s Court (Court of the Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan), one of the first batch of think-tank experts for environmental resource trials in the People’s Court in the Chengdu High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, the distinguished expert of the Sichuan Environmental Protection Industry Group and the ecology and environmental law expert in 16 municipalities (prefectures) including Mianyang and Yibin in Sichuan Province.
With more than ten years practice in the area of environmental law, Ms. Kou has directly participated in the formulation (amendment) of a large number of laws and policies including the Amendment (XI) to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Yangtze River Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste, the Administrative Penalties Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Regulation on the Prevention and Control of Soil Pollution in Sichuan Province, and the Opinions on Specific Issues in Pushing Forward the Reform on Ecology and Environment Damages Systems. In terms of case handling, she has participated in more than 1,000 environmental administrative penalty cases, more than 150 environmental administrative reconsideration and litigation cases, provided expert opinions more than 30 times to public security bodies, procuratorates and courts for the trials of environmental resource cases, and participated in the handling of more than 10 major environmental pollution criminal cases. Ms. Kou has handled over 3,000 national and provincial evaluation files. In terms of litigation, she has represented administrative bodies in responding to administrative reconsiderations and litigations and was the plaintiff’s attorney in the first litigation case of ecology and environment damage in Sichuan Province. In terms of non-litigation, she has represented the Sichuan Provincial People’s Government to complete the first ever claim for ecology and environment damages through consultation, represented Sichuan Province in cross-provincial pollution cases within Gansu Province and Shaanxi Province, and has provided guidance to several provincial and municipal governmental agencies and enterprises in their response to environmental disputes.
Ms. Kou has also devoted herself to the further study of environmental law and serves as an off-campus tutor for postgraduate students at the Humanities and Law School of Chengdu University of Technology. She is the co-author of Environmental Law and Environmental Policy and the co-editor of A Case Study of Environmental Law Enforcement in Sichuan, and has published several research papers and essays relating to environmental law issues. She has provided more than 500 seminars on various environmental law topics for companies, institutions and government and judicial agencies at all levels, and has been frequently invited to join the expert panels of various judicial agencies and academic forums regarding environmental law held by universities and research institutes, and has been interviewed frequently by news media organisations.
To promote green, low-carbon circular economic development across the country and based on the talent acquisition policy and integrated platform offered by JunHe, Ms. Kou is a welcome addition to our environment-related practice area. She will be a strong asset in handling our clients’ complicated legal environmental issues and will further promote JunHe’s success in the implementation of the green development strategies of governments and the green transformation of businesses.