Environmental Law in the Russian Federation

This chapter begins with considering the basic concepts of the interaction between nature and society that underlie the legal regulation of conservation of nature. The authors review the concepts of sustainable development, circular economy, climate change, and environmental law and draw attention to the methods (ways) of legal regulation of environmental relations. Generally speaking, a method of legal regulation is understood as a set of ways (techniques and means) enshrined in legal rules to impact peoples behavior and their social relations governed by law. There are two methods of legal regulation that function in environmental law: imperative and dispositive. The imperative method in environmental law means the establishment of prescriptions, permissions, prohibitions for the subjects of environmental legal relations and manifests itself in the possibility of applying state coercion to the execution of legal prescriptions by legal entities, citizens, including foreign ones, as well as by officials. The dispositive method is based on the equality of the parties to legal relations and their possibility to choose the particular behavior patterns independently. The citizens right to establish public and other environmental associations is a typical example here. The main stages of development of Russian environmental legislation are analyzed and six levels of the sources of environmental law are distinguished subsequently in the textbook. The principles of environmental law are also considered; these are the basic ideas that underlie environmental law as a branch of law, determine its content and areas for further development and are used in law enforcement practice in case there are gaps in law. The authors distinguish generally accepted principles, interbranch, branch principles and principles of institutions of law in the system of principles of environmental law. A separate section in the textbook is dedicated to the system of environmental law – its internal structure. It is followed by the section dedicated to environmental legal relations –types of social relations regulated by rules of environmental law of Russia. This chapter concludes with a section on ownership of some natural resources.

This chapter deals with the main stages of the formation of environmental rights in international law. The authors define the human right to a favorable environment as the possibility for every person, people, and the whole humankind to live with such a state of the Earths biosphere that ensures the maximum level of physical and mental health, as well as means eliminating global threats to the biosphere caused by human activity. It is stated that further development of the system of environmental rights will inevitably affect human rights and the environment, and the rights of environmental refugees. The main authorities of Russian citizens and public associations in the field of environmental protection are studied in terms of Russian legislation. These include right to establish public associations and non-commercial organizations which carry out activities in the area of environmental protection; the right to participate in assemblies, rallies, pickets, processions and demonstrations, referendums and other activities relating to environmental protection that are not contrary to legislation; the right of citizens to require state authorities, local government bodies and other organizations to provide timely, complete and reliable environmental information; the right to propose organization of a public environmental expert review and participate in it; the right to file complaints, applications and proposals concerning nature protection issues and the negative impact of it on state authorities, local government bodies and other organizations and to obtain timely and substantiated responses; the right of citizens to file claims in court for compensation for harm caused to the environment, as well as to their life, health and property, and the right to provide assistance to public authorities in settlement of environmental protection issues. Further, the authors consider environmental duties of citizens and their associations as well as state guarantees of citizens rights (i.e., a set of Russian conditions for the exercise of environmental rights and means of their protection in case of encroachment on them by the state or third parties).

In this chapter, it is pointed out that management in the area of environmental protection lies in the domain of executive authorities of the Russian Federation and its constituent entities as well as local government bodies. These bodies aim at regulating the interaction between nature and society to ensure a favorable environmental quality. Management activity in environmental protection is carried out exclusively by state executive authorities and local government bodies. Legislative and judicial authorities do not perform any management functions. In a similar manner, public environmental associations and other legal entities are not involved in management. Despite the common goals of environmental management, every level of public environmental management (the Russian Federation, constituent entities of the Russian Federation, local government bodies) has its own level of competence. Management bodies in environmental protection can be classified according to several criteria. The main criterion is the scope of their inherent authoritative powers. According to this criterion, they are divided into general and special competence bodies. Bodies of general competence are distinguished as a special type of public authorities because decision-making in environmental protection is not their special and only function; it is performed along with the fulfillment of other management tasks. The President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, executive authorities of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and local government bodies are endowed with general competence. Bodies of special competence are state authorities that are specially authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation or the President of the Russian Federation to perform the corresponding environmental functions (the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc.). According to the nature of their special competence, environmental management bodies are divided into two types: interbranch and branch. Interbranch bodies perform a set of nature protection tasks concerning all (or the majority) of natural objects or types of activities; branch bodies protect the environment in certain life areas (transport, industry, power sector, defense). It is pointed out that the Federal Law “On Environmental Protection” itself does not distribute the powers among specific bodies of general or special competence. The law lists the powers of federal, regional, and local nature protection significance, and these powers are distributed inside each level of authority by other laws and bylaws. Attention is paid to environmental management functions, i.e., the main areas of activities of state executive authorities and local government bodies to ensure a favorable environmental quality and protect environmental human and civil rights (standardization, licensing, expert review, EIA). The state economic regulation of environmental protection is not less important, and it includes the establishment of the system of payments for environmental pollution, tax benefits, and other incentive payments, including measures for the support of environmental entrepreneurship.

The authors suppose that legal liability for environmental offenses is understood as a legal relationship between the state represented by specially authorized authorities and the party that has committed an environmental offense (an individual, an official or a legal entity) and is obliged to undergo state coercion measures in the forms of particular forfeitures (of a person, property or organizational nature) for the violation of rules of environmental legislation. An environmental offense is a ground and the time of the commencement of legal relations of legal liability; it is a guilty wrongful act entailing legal liability and prohibited by environmental legal rules of the Russian Federation and constituent entities of the Russian Federation; it infringes on the constitutional right of everyone to a favorable environment and also causes harm to the natural environment (its objects and components) or poses a real threat of this harm. An environmental offense (like any other offense) includes four elements: the object, the objective aspect, the subject and the subjective aspect. For the classification of an offense as environmental, the object of the encroachment at the time of its commitment must be in the system of ecological relationships with the environment. Liability for environmental offenses performs a range of functions: stimulating (compliance with rules of environmental legislation),preventive (making it possible to prevent new offenses), compensatory (aimed at compensating for harm to the environment, the life, health and property of people) and punitive (punishment of offenders). The authors raise a question about the number of types of legal liability for environmental offenses. The Federal Law “On Environmental Protection” itself mentions four types of liability in Article 75: property, disciplinary, administrative, and criminal liability. Having analyzed the scientific doctrine and practice, the authors state that environmental offenses entail civil legal, administrative and criminal liability. Criminal and civil legal liability are regulated only by federal acts. Suppose a person is brought to administrative or criminal liability; in that case, he or she may also have to compensate for the harm caused to the environment. However, it is impossible to bring anyone to both administrative and criminal liability. Particular attention is paid to the issues of compensation for environmental harm, which is taken as negative changes in the quality of the environment that are caused by economic or other human activities involving the destruction of ecological relationships, pollution, and destruction of certain natural components and can result in harm to the life, health or property of citizens (property of legal entities)

The authors prove that with the purpose to implement the tasks of ensuring the appropriate quality of the environment in Russia, environmental legislation provides for a system of measures, which, along with giving a special legal status to certain specially protected areas or establishing rules and regulations for the protection and rational use of natural objects, also includes special environmental requirements mandatory for observance and execution by all legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and citizens engaged in various types of economic and other activities that have a negative impact on the environment. The list of these types of activities is not exhaustive and includes special rules and requirements for real estate construction, operation of industrial, power and agricultural facilities, transport, etc. The requirements are comprehensive and thus different from the duties imposed on users of natural resources and third parties using certain natural resources (forests, water, etc.). In particular, rules dedicated to the protection of forests from fires contain sufficiently unique prescriptions that can be used only to protect forests. In a similar manner, the measures for fauna protection through the maintenance of the Red Data Book are clearly localized by this natural object. The comprehensive nature of the requirements for certain types of activities consists in the fact that they are aimed at regulating the activities threatening several natural objects rather than one. Requirements for environmentally safe operation of power facilities are a typical example in this case. Requirements for construction and operation of nuclear power stations are intended to exclude any repetition of the tragedy of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, when the radiation had a negative impact on not one component of the natural environment (land, forests, water, fauna, air) but all at once, and the environment contaminated with radiation caused harm to the life and health of hundreds of thousands of people. Harm to nature and the health of citizens from tests of nuclear weapons or from more peaceful activities, for example, the use of pesticides in agriculture is equally complex with regard to its consequences. In the latter case, violation of environmental requirements in the field of chemicalization of agriculture results in harm to land, surface and ground water bodies. 

All types of natural objects are closely interlinked with each other. Deterioration of the quality of one of them inevitably leads to particular consequences for the condition of the other elements of the ecological system. This is why legislation stipulates a range of measures aimed at protecting both the environment in general and its constituent components. Land protection focuses on the preservation of soil fertility. From the analysis of the Forest Code of the Russian Federation it follows that there are nature protection rules of a general nature covering all types of forests and special rules specifying these general provisions for certain categories of forests. In particular, the general environmental rules consist in the fact that all forests are subject to protection from fires, pollution (including contamination by radioactive substances) and other negative impact as well as protection from harmful organisms. The legal regime of water bodies varies depending on whether they are located on the surface of the earth or they are ground water bodies. The Government of the Russian Federation approved special rules for protection of both surface and ground water bodies. The task of water protection is solved by imposing duties on the subjects of water relations – citizens and legal entities as well as public authorities. For the purpose of water protection, environmental and water laws establish a range of general and special requirements. The protection of fauna habitat is one of the areas of fauna protection activities. Legislation establishes two regimes of the protection of animals. The general regime of the protection is established by the Federal Law “On Fauna” (based on the criterion of the possibility of being an object of hunting and fishing, two categories of animals are distinguished); the special regime is established in relation to animals attributed to specially protected ones, including those listed in the Red Data Book of Russia. Researchers point out two main problems in the area of rational use and protection of subsoil. They are the inefficient use of subsoil resources with the increasing complexity of field exploitation and the growing impact of mining on the environment. Finally, the consistent system of legal rules regulating the protection of air from anthropogenic impact is considered at the end of this Chapter

The Russian Federation now stipulates the possibility of establishing two special environmental legal regimes in the country, including specially protected natural areas (SPNAs) and ecological disaster zones. The essence of both environmental legal regimes consists of establishing a special procedure for the use and protection of a clearly localized territory different from the regime of using land plots and other natural objects of the country. This manifests itself in establishing features of the management of this territory, the regime of restrictions of civil and corporate rights, as well as additional funding of a range of special nature protection activities. The purpose of the establishment of special restrictions and prohibitions for economic and other use of these territories is to create additional guarantees of the achievement of the main objective of environmental legislation – to ensure a favorable environmental quality. This means that the establishment of the special environmental legal regime is necessary if the general environmental requirements (licensing, standardization, etc.) do not make it possible to preserve and restore specific natural objects and systems in the appropriate state. The list of the relevant prohibitions and restrictions is contained in federal and regional environmental legislation as well as in land, water, forest legislation, legislation on natural and cultural heritage, etc. Particular additional measures in the area under consideration can also be adopted at the municipal level with the corresponding legal acts of local government bodies. The legal status of both varieties of areas with a special environmental legal regime (SPNAs and ecological disaster zones) has several similar and different features. The purposes of giving a particular territory a special environmental legal regime are also the same – to ensure everyone's right to a favorable environment. Significant differences between these territories consist in the objective related to them. SPNAs are created to conserve certain ecological systems for present and future generations and to study the unique natural areas; ecological disaster zones are created to restore disturbed ecosystems. In this regard, the access of citizens to SPNAs is not prohibited (it is even encouraged), while they have to obtain a special permit to enter an ecological disaster zone. Consequently, the special regime is established to ensure the protection of two territories that are opposite to their ecological state.

In this chapter, it is stated that the international environmental law is a set of international legal principles and rules governing international relations regarding the protection of the environment from negative impact. These rules and regulations ensure the rational use of environemnt and its components and provide favorable conditions for the life and health of the present and future generations of people. The development in international environmental cooperation was gradual, like the development of national (Russian) environmental law. Some references to international cooperation in this chapter in environmental protection can be found even in the era of the ancient world. However, the full-fledged international cooperation in environmental protection began only in the second half of the 19th century. This can be explained by the fact that the human impact on nature was small before the Industrial Revolution. The negative impact of the neighboring countries on nature arose with the massive construction of plants that release emissions into the air and water bodies. This resulted in the need for governments of different countries to agree on various parameters about the safety of the environment. The development of international cooperation in environmental protection is divided into several stages. It is pointed out that international environmental law is a young branch of law closely interacting with other branches of international law, including international maritime, air, and space law. These branches of law regulate relations regarding the exploitation of the relevant natural resources and are based on the exercise of the rights of sovereign states to use natural resources. According to the authors, international environmental law has an independent subject of legal regulation – international environmental relations, which can be conveniently divided into three groups: a) Relations for the prevention and limitation of the harmful impact on the environment, which can be resolved only by efforts of the entire world community (pollution of the World Ocean, the air basin, pollution of the environment during military conflicts, etc.); b) Ensuring the rational use of international natural resources (for example, resources of the sea bed); c) Protection of unique natural objects through their conservation from human economic impact (for example, natural heritage sites, wetlands, rare animals and plants, etc.).
The subjects of international environmental law include states, international organizations, and international non-governmental organizations. However, states are the main subject of international law.

 In the era of globalization, international cooperation becomes more important since no country in the world can solve the problem of global climate change or pollution of the World Ocean on its own. However, the interpenetration of the most successful legal rules and institutions of other countries into national legal systems is a no less significant trend. The study of this comparative aspect makes it possible to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of Russian environmental legislation, formulate constructive suggestions for the Russian legislator, and identify possible ways of bilateral cooperation in environmental issues that are understood in the national legislation of two or more countries. Russian environmental legislation is more closely linked to the CIS countries both for the geographical reason (as neighbors) and because these countries were part of the USSR for many years, and the approaches to the legal regulation of environmental (and many other) social relations that were established during that period of our joint history are still used today. The environmental laws of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Republic of Belarus can be compared as an example. The criterion for comparison is the content of the main environmental legal institutions included in these laws. The relevant environmental legal institutions in Russia and these countries can coincide completely, partially, or don’t not coincide at all. The main focus in this chapter is not so much on comparing the laws of the Republics of Kazakhstan and Belarus with each other but comparing them with the basic institutions of Russian environmental law. The fundamental difference between environmental law of the European Union and the Russian Federation is not only the supranational nature of EU directives but also the fact that the EU almost does not regulate natural resource management issues e.g., in terms of the procedure for the provision of natural resources based on the right of ownership or other rights. This is the scope of national legislation of the member countries. Both in Russia and the environmental law of the EU, we can observe a trend of ecologization of related legislation: it means environmental rules are introduced into the regulatory acts governing related areas of social relations (transport, power industry, fight against unemployment, etc.). Moreover, in this chapter, the authors point out several characteristics of not only the environmental law of the United States but of Russia, China, the European Union, or many other countries and consider the current distinctive features of the nature protection policy of China.