Features of civil liability for environmental offenses

Abstract

The paper considers the question of the peculiarities of the regulation of civil liability for environmental offenses. A significant step forward in strengthening the importance of the institution of legal liability for environmental offenses in Ukraine was enshrined in the Concept of National Environmental Policy until 2020, the principle of “environmental responsibility, which requires liability for any violations of environmental legislation”. This principle, according to the above concept, is included in the list of fundamental principles on which the national environmental policy in Ukraine should be based. The purpose of the study is to define the concept of legal liability for environmental offenses, to establish its features, types and relationships with other concepts, to clarify the content of environmental offenses and ways to prevent its commission. Legal liability for environmental offenses is an important legal institution to ensure law and order in the field of ecology, environmental safety, protection of human rights and freedoms, which has both general features of legal liability, developed by theory, and specific features due to the subject of regulation. Liability for environmental offenses arises only due to the existence of such an environmental offense, which is characterized by a number of features and a special composition, which includes such mandatory elements as object, subject, objective and subjective side. The absence of these elements excludes grounds for liability. At the level of the application of liability to offenders, the state must address the issue of preventing the commission of these offenses. The causes and conditions of committing specific crimes or administrative offenses must be established and ways to reduce their number must be established. Civil liability is an important means of restoring violated rights and compensation for damage caused by the offense. Thus, environmental liability is a new independent type of legal liability, which has not yet been enshrined in law, but has already received the support of many legal scholars and is currently a promising area for the development of the institution of liability.