BEIJING, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Procuratorates in China are increasingly using remote sensing and other technologies to gather evidence in environmental public interest litigation, the country's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Monday.
A media conference held by the top procuratorate in Beijing was told that a remote-sensing application platform established by the SPP now serves nearly 400 procuratorates at the prefectural level and above to retrieve and view satellite images of sites of reported pollution and environmental damage.
The platform, developed with support from the China National Space Administration, began providing service to procuratorates in May 2025. It has so far processed more than 10,000 satellite image scenes, said Zhang Xueqiao, deputy procurator-general of the SPP.
Zhang noted that the platform has assisted in public interest litigation cases concerning water pollution control in south China's Pearl River basin. "It provides technological support for river basin governance, a challenge faced worldwide," he said.
Qiu Jinghui, a senior prosecutor with the SPP, said that satellite images allow prosecutors to measure the extent of damage and review how a site has changed over time.
The platform helps prosecutors to more efficiently verify leads, assess ecological damage and corroborate evidence from multiple sources, he added.
Procuratorates also use other new technologies, such as drone photography, big-data comparisons and AI screening, to gather evidence and assess the results of ecological restoration in cases involving monitoring across large areas, the media conference was told.
Data from the SPP showed that, as of mid-August this year, procuratorial authorities across China had handled 73,000 ecological and environmental public interest cases since 2025, including 61,000 administrative and 12,000 civil cases. ■
