As a vital component of environmental governance systems in various countries, the environmental public interest litigation system serves functions such as aggregating the “diffuse interests” related to the environment, supplementing and supervising environmental administrative law enforcement, and legalizing environmental protests. During the evolutionary process of the environmental public interest litigation system, theories such as environmental justice, public participation, and reflexive law have provided theoretical support for it. China’s environmental public interest litigation system faces issues such as internal institutional conflicts, overlapping institutional functions, and overly singular litigation objectives. Considering the national governance structure, the global governance system, and the mechanism for building an ecological civilization, China’s environmental public interest litigation system should be revised in the following aspects: constructing modern types of litigation with diverse forms of environmental public interest litigation, reasonably arranging the sequence of plaintiffs in environmental public interest litigation, and integrating environmental civil public interest litigation with administrative public interest litigation.

environmental public interest litigation, institutional functions, theoretical foundations, China’s practice, institutional improvement