With the development of China's economy and the improvement of productivity, environmental pollution is becoming more and more serious, and the judicial practice of major environmental pollution accident crime is difficult to play its role. After the introduction of the Criminal Law Amendment (VIII), the crime of major environmental pollution accident has changed a lot, but there are still shortcomings. How to make the new crime of environmental pollution play a better role in judicial practice is one of the key issues of environmental governance at present.

The first chapter is an overview of the crime of environmental pollution, mainly about the concept and characteristics of this crime; The second chapter is the constitutive requirements of the crime of polluting the environment, mainly from the object, objective and subjective aspects of the crime, the objective aspects of the crime, the analysis results of the crime and the types of the crime, and the principle of imputation of the subjective aspects. The third chapter is the identification of environmental pollution crime, which mainly discusses the difference between crime and non-crime, illegal disposal, causality and other crimes, and then discusses the statutory punishment of this crime; The fourth chapter is suggestions, mainly to refine the charges and increase the types of punishment.

Keywords: criminal law; Amendment VIII of the Criminal Law; environmental pollution