Health damage caused as a result of adverse environmental impacts: civil compensation mechanisms

Abstract

The subject of research in this article is the regulations and theoretical ideas about compensation for harm caused to a citizen’s health as a result of adverse environmental impacts. The purpose of the study is to create doctrinal conditions and develop proposals for the development of civil legislation aimed at ensuring compensation for harm caused by damage to health in the environmental sphere. As a result of the study, it was proved that in order to ensure real compensability of harm to health in the environmental sphere, the presumption of environmental danger of certain types of economic activity should be accompanied by the legal establishment of an irrefutable presumption of the origin of physical harm from adverse environmental impacts, based on available knowledge about the causes and symptoms of environmentally caused diseases (medical criterion), whether the victim belongs to a risk group based on living or working in the contaminated area (legal criterion). However, the author does not limit himself to justifying the need to introduce this presumption, but proposes a set of measures for the accompanying development of legislation. It is noted that the irrefutable presumption of the origin of physical harm from adverse environmental impacts must be accompanied by the establishment of an obligation of business entities to create conditions for the implementation of non-tort forms of compensation, alternative to insurance compensation within the framework of liability insurance. In this capacity, agreements on the distribution of risks can act, the terms of which provide for the creation of a quasi-insurance public benefit fund, payments from which will repay obligations to victims in an amount that allows taking into account the loss of ability to do paid work, the need for outside care, etc.