Ecologically neglected territories in international, foreign and Russian law: comparative and legal aspect

The article states that in the modern world full of industrial, technical, military and other facilities, accidents and catastrophes resulting in a huge harm to the nature and health of the people are inevitable. Global climate changes result in the emergence of unprecedented droughts, floods and other natural disasters. These problems require urgent solutions; however, the priority of economic interests over the ecological ones in Russia results in extremely serious consequences for life, health of citizens and threatens national security. The changing position of the international community is very significant and this will demand the revision of the existing ideas about the category of "disaster" in international law, with inclusion of the catastrophic ecological situations, which are not connected with concrete accidents and catastrophes. The legal regime of ecologically neglected territories in Russia (unlike a number of republics of the former USSR) suffers from extreme uncertainty and in this connection (and in view of cutting funds for environmental protection) no zone of ecological catastrophe or an emergency ecological situation was created here. Thus, the rules of other laws extending to zones of ecological disaster have not come into force yet. Article 250 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation considers the commission of such a crime as pollution of water in a zone of ecological disaster or of an emergency ecological situation to be a characterizing feature and this leads to a more strict liability. However, there are no such zones, and, therefore, Item 2 of this Article cannot be applied, and this is not the only example. Besides, when reforming the Russian ecological legislation it is necessary to take into account the experience of other CIS countries providing in their ecological laws for not one ( as in Russia) ,but different types of territories of ecological trouble (zone of ecological disaster). This allows giving a special ecological legal status and taking a complex of recovery measures to problem territories where a full-scale environmental disaster has not happened yet. Moreover, it is necessary to differentiate categories "an emergency situation" and "a zone of ecological disaster" since not every emergency situation can give rise to a long-term ecological crisis on the considerable territory that demands the acceptance of a complex aggregate of recovery measures.

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