2013年1月1日起，正式确立公益诉讼制度的新《民事诉讼法》生效，但是环境公益诉讼实践并没有取得突破性进展，反而遭遇“倒春寒”。本文简要回顾了2007～2013年各地法院受理的环境公益诉讼案件，分析了阻碍各地法院受理环境公益诉讼案件的原因和《环境保护法》修改对环境公益诉讼主体资格限定的争议，进而分析了2013年环境公益诉讼、环境信息公开诉讼、污染环境罪等进展，来探讨环境公益诉讼的发展方向。
New Civil Procedure Law，which formally established the public interest litigation （PIL）system，took effect from January 1，2013 onward.Nonetheless，no breakthroughs have been made in environmental PILs，which suffered a “cold spell” instead.This paper offers a brief review of environmental PIL cases handled by local courts from 2007 through 2013，with a focus on analyzing the obstacles to their handling such cases and the debate on changes made in the Environmental Protection Lawto the qualifications of parties in environmental PILs.To explore the direction of PILs，it then analyzes environmental PILs that the courts rejected in 2013 as well as the progress of environmental PILs and other environmental lawsuits involving the disclosure of environmental information or environmental crimes that they are hearin.
