Abstract

The development of energy, agriculture and industry, the growth of consumption of natural resources inevitably increases the risks of environmental offenses, and lead to increase the negative impact on the environment. In accordance with the Strategy of Environmental Safety of the Russian Federation until 2025, minimization of damage caused to the environment, elimination of negative consequences of anthropogenic factors on the environment, as well as the rehabilitation of territories and water areas contaminated as a result of economic and other activities, prevention of environmental harm are named as the main directions of solving the main tasks in the field of environmental safety. The current system of accountability for environmental damage in our country could not be called effective. Improvement of legislation on compensation for environmental harm should start with the norms of material law. According to N. Robinson and L. Kurukulasuriya, “To be an effective means of environmental protection, liability regimes should cover not only traditionally accepted forms of compensation, but the damage caused to the environment. The main task of developing special regimes of environmental responsibility is to help people understand the consequences of the negative impact on the environment – the public good, which is the basis of the system of life support of people and all living things. However, many countries have not introduced special liability regimes for environmental harm, relying on traditional civil liability standards applied in the environmental context”. As noted by leading foreign researchers in the field of environmental law, one of the main problems in solving the issue of compensation for environmental harm in the framework of classical tort law is the need to belong to an environmental good, which is public in nature, to any person. Another equally important problem that characterizes liability for environmental damage largely as public law is the methods of assessing the damage caused. Environmental damage may not be quantifiable from an economic point of view, for example, in the case of loss of fauna and flora that have no market value, and in the case of damage to ecosystems or landscapes, economic value may not be assessed using traditional approaches to damage assessment.