Environmental criminal law serves as an important guarantee for environmental governance. However, in current environmental governance, there are issues such as the marginalization of criminal law safeguards, the formalistic nature of victim participation mechanisms, and a structural imbalance between punishment and restoration in the environmental crime sanction system. From a jurisprudential perspective, the reasons for the current predicament lie in the dual division of environmental legal interests, which causes an imbalance in the protection of personal and ecological rights and interests. There is also a deviation between the functions of environmental criminal law and governance practices, restricting the effectiveness of environmental criminal law. Additionally, the rigidification of the roles and logic of participating entities further hinders the substantive relief of victims’ rights and interests. Based on the perspective of penal modernization, environmental criminal law should shift towards the concept of systematic legal interest relief, integrate the principles of penal moderation and restorative justice. Through paths such as innovating alternative sanction schemes, clarifying the boundaries between criminal and administrative law, strengthening public participation, and facilitating smooth channels for victim relief, it can achieve functional innovation and efficiency enhancement of environmental criminal law, and promote the

substantive protection of victims’ rights and interests.

environmental criminal law, victims’ rights and interests, legal interest relief, restorative justice, penal modernization