Problems of legal regulation in the field of environmental monitoring in the Russian Federation

In the Russian Federation, the system of legal regulation in the field of monitoring is experiencing certain problems that reduce the effectiveness of monitoring the state and pollution of the environment. The content and effectiveness of regulatory legal regulation in the field of environmental monitoring reflects the implementation of constitutional guarantees for citizens to obtain reliable data on the state of the environment. The introduction of legislative measures to ensure access to information on environmental quality implies the obligation of the State not only to provide this information to interested parties, but also to conduct regular monitoring and create publicly accessible information bases. It is necessary to note a feature inherent in Russian environmental legislation in the field of monitoring: its legislative definition practically does not cover such an important element as monitoring the exploitation of natural resources. However, according to the provisions of the tenth chapter of Federal Law № 7-FZ of January 10, 2002 «On Environmental Protection», this aspect is integrated into the system of state environmental monitoring. Russian legislation defines three main levels of environmental monitoring: federal (state monitoring network), regional (monitoring systems at the level of subjects) and industrial (monitoring at the level of individual organizations). These levels are integrated into the unified state environmental monitoring system, which ensures the collection and analysis of environmental data at all these levels. However, current legislative and regulatory documents often do not provide clear explanations on the issues of interaction between different subjects of environmental monitoring. Simply put, it is not always obvious in what circumstances, which authorities and from what financial sources should monitor the state and pollution of the environment. Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: - the Russian legislative system does not distinguish between natural resource and environmental types of environmental monitoring, despite their different focus and methodology; - Russian legislation does not define a regulatory framework for regulating meteorological monitoring, which covers the study of atmospheric phenomena and weather changes, and hydrological monitoring, which analyzes changes in the state of water resources; - There are legal gaps and contradictions in the legislation of the Russian Federation regarding the levels of environmental monitoring, which requires adjustments to existing regulations. The article is based on the results of an analysis of the legal aspects of environmental monitoring in Russia and the CIS countries in the context of the development of the CIS model law «On Environmental Monitoring». The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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