Legal Liability for Environmental Violations

General Provisions

Legal liability for environmental violations represents a set of measures applied to persons who have violated norms of environmental legislation. It is expressed in an additional obligation imposed on the offender, beyond the obligations already incumbent upon them, and is accompanied by adverse consequences aimed at restoring the violated ecological order.

Federal legislation establishes various types of liability for violating environmental norms: property, disciplinary, administrative, and criminal. This approach ensures a comprehensive impact on the offender and serves as an effective mechanism for protecting the environment from the negative effects of economic and other activities.

In scientific literature, legal liability for environmental violations is defined as the interaction between the state, law enforcement agencies, and other authorized entities with the offender aimed at applying appropriate sanctions to them. An environmental violation is considered an unlawful act causing harm to the environment or creating a threat of such harm.

The key features of an environmental violation include the unlawfulness of the action, the guilt of the subject, punishability, the nature of the ecological damage caused, public danger, and the type of offense. These characteristics allow for differentiating violations based on the degree of their public significance and selecting the appropriate measure of legal liability.

Legal responsibility is divided into offenses and crimes. Offenses include administrative, disciplinary, and civil violations, while crimes are criminal. Such a classification approach ensures systematic application of norms and effective protection of natural resources, preventing environmental risks and stimulating compliance with legislation.

As Yu.G. Zharikov notes, in law enforcement, a more justified perspective views legal liability in general and ecological liability in particular as the offender's obligation to bear additional duties in relation to those they have failed to perform. In this context, legal liability is not only state coercion, since all law inherently features coercive elements, but also such coercion that, alongside the compulsory fulfillment of obligations, entails specific adverse consequences for the offender. These adverse consequences, relative to the compulsorily performed obligation, Natural resource users have an additional character¹.

According to Article 75 of the Federal Law "On Environmental Protection," violation of legislation in the field of environmental protection establishes property, disciplinary, administrative, and criminal liability in accordance with legislation.

The current legislation does not provide a definition of legal liability for environmental violations. A definition of the relevant concept is proposed in scientific literature. For example, according to M.M. Brinchuk, legal liability for environmental violations is understood as the relationship between the state through authorized bodies in the field of environmental protection, law enforcement agencies, and other authorized subjects and a person (physical, official, or legal) who has committed an environmental violation, regarding the application of appropriate penalties².

In the previously applicable Law of the RSFSR dated December 19, 1991 No. 2060-1 «On the Protection of the Natural Environment», there was a definition of the term «environmental violation», which was understood as a culpable, unlawful act violating environmental legislation and causing harm to the natural environment and human health. As noted by M.M. Brinchuk, an environmental violation – is an unlawful, usually culpable act (action or inaction) committed by a legally capable subject, causing ecological damage or creating a real threat of such damage, or violating rights and lawful

interests of the subjects of environmental law³. Among the characteristics of an environmental violation, O.L. Dubovik lists: 1) unlawfulness (general and specific), i.e., the presence of a prohibition on behavior established by a norm of environmental or other legislation; 2) culpability (although Russian and international legislation establishes liability without fault for damage caused by a source of increased danger); 3) punishability, i.e., the existence of sanctions for violating prohibitions set out in the law, and bodies (persons) authorized on behalf of the state to apply them; 4) ecological nature of the harm caused, which is manifested in the characteristics of the object of the offense (the environment and other entities related to it elements and objects); 5) subjectivity as indicating the status, qualities, properties or affiliation of persons (physical and legal entities) involved in liability; 6) public danger, reflected primarily by reference to the object and objective aspect of the offense (consequences); 7) types of offenses (material, formal, endangerment)⁴.

According to general theory of law, violations are divided into offenses (administrative, disciplinary, civil law violations) and crimes (criminal violations).