Legal regulation of environmental conflicts: some basic provisions

Abstract

Based on the provisions of the theory of public law and taking into consideration the specific character of nature as a public good, the article provides a theoretical justification of separating ecological responsibility as an independent type of legal responsibility. The author proves that peculiarities of a certain environmental conflict and their combination (proneness to environmental conflict) are the reasons and criteria of incurring deferent legal effects. He also considers that an opportunity to apply environmental legislation to influence an environmental conflict essentially constitutes the criterion for recognizing the conflict as legal and, consequently, environmental and legal. The author demonstrates the necessity of legal regulation of ecological and legal conflicts. It is determined by given characteristics of environmental conflicts and proneness to environmental conflicts that have already been described in environment law literature and that have been developed as a result of current research. In the author's opinion, the social practice and the nature of law convincingly prove the necessity to employ legal means (in the broad sense of this word) to resolve environmental conflicts in the public interest. It is well known that the objective of the structure of any legal system to regulate relations and, therefore, to prevent potential and resolve existing conflicts is the most important. The article identifies the elements of the system that settle environmental conflicts. They form the General and Special Part and they can be enumerated as follows. The General Part might include a number of separate institutions or groups of legal prescriptions and instructions related to all types of environmental conflicts. The Special Part provides for regulations governing mechanisms, i. e. procedures of resolving individual environmental conflicts separated for various reasons. The author believes that now it would be inappropriate to amend the existing legislation as, with regard to the regulation of environmental conflicts, these issues have not been properly discussed yet. However, the time is ripe for, first, identifying, on the basis of a thorough discussion, the need to adopt regulations governing the settlement of environmental conflicts in accordance with the law, and, then, to implement a certain sequence of their development starting with theoretical analysis and proceeding to drafting new laws.