Development of the Institute for the Protection of Environmental Rights of Citizens in the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China
The article examines the Institute for the Protection of Environmental Rights of citizens in the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China (PRC), the novels that appeared at the Institute for the Protection of Environmental Rights of Citizens of these states. In these countries, non-identical approaches are used to consolidate environmental rights. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China does not regulate these rights, which is not an obstacle to ensuring their protection. The significant changes that have taken place over the past few years in the legal framework governing the protection of environmental rights of both Russian and Chinese citizens indicate the development of institutions for the protection of these rights.
Keywords: protection of environmental rights, ways to protect environmental rights, institute for the protection of environmental rights.
The issues of protecting the environmental rights of citizens of the Russian Federation (hereinafter also referred to as the Russian Federation, Russia) and the People's Republic of China (hereinafter also referred to as the PRC, China) are in the focus of attention of the leadership of these countries, which annually emphasize the importance of ensuring high standards of environmental well-being.
In a Message to the Federal Assembly on February 20, 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that solving environmental problems is a task not only for our industry, but also for science <1>, and on January 15, 2020, the head of the Russian state announced that environmental problems and environmental pollution are common challenges for global development <2>.
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<1> See: Putin V.V. Message of the President of the Russian Federation To the Federal Assembly // President of Russia. 2019. February 20th.
<2> See: Putin V.V. Message of the President of the Russian Federation To the Federal Assembly // President of Russia. 2020. January 15th.
At the XIX Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for further acceleration of eco-civilizational construction in the state <3>, and on October 29, 2020, the head of the Chinese state at the V Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China of the 19th convocation announced a fundamental improvement in the state of the environment in order to build a "Beautiful China" through the introduction of environmentally friendly technologies in all spheres of society <4>.
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<3> See: Report of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the XIX Congress of the Communist Party of China on October 18, 2017.
<4> See: Report of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the fifth plenum of the XIX Congress of the Communist Party of China on October 29, 2020.
Changing directions of state development, as well as the emergence of environmental goals aimed at solving the identified political tasks, require building a new line of protection of environmental rights.
According to M.I. Vasilyeva, the recognition and legislative protection of human environmental interests is one of the most important results of the development of law in the XX century. <5> Cui Jianxia's remark is also true, who believes that "everyone's right to the environment" is gradually becoming global, as governments of various countries include the idea of this right in the policies of their states <6>.
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<5> See: Vasilyeva M.I. Public interests in environmental law: theory and practice of legal regulation: Dis. ... Dr. yurid. M., 2003.
<6> See: Cui Jianxia. Reconstruction of environmental rights (in Chinese) // Journal of Shandong University (edition on philosophy and social sciences). 2019. N 6. P. 152.
Therefore, the improvement of environmental legislation in any country at the present time is explained, among other things, by the need to ensure the protection of environmental rights recognized by citizens of these States.
China's formation and maintenance of green development and the image of an "ecologically civilized" state are designed to ensure a balance of economic interests and environmental protection, including in order to reduce violations of environmental rights (hereinafter also referred to as environmental rights) of citizens of this state. The economic recovery in China has become one of the reasons for the deterioration of the quality of the environment and health, not only of Chinese citizens, but also of citizens of certain eastern regions of Russia.
Solving environmental problems, in which the primary task is to ensure the protection of environmental rights, which include the right to a favorable environment, reliable information about its condition and compensation for damage caused to his health or property by an environmental offense, enshrined in Article 42 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation <7>, is also relevant for the Russian state. This is confirmed not only by numerous appeals to the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, but also by the changes introduced into national environmental legislation.
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<7> See: The Constitution of the Russian Federation. Adopted by popular vote on December 12, 1993 // Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 1993. December 12.
The development of Russian legislation is primarily associated with the improvement of the main environmental regulatory legal act. The Federal Law No. 7-FZ of January 10, 2002 "On Environmental Protection" <8> introduced a norm fixing information on the state of the environment (environmental information) (art. 4.3). It clarifies information related to environmental information: on the state and pollution of the environment, including the state and pollution of atmospheric air, surface waters of water bodies, soils; on the radiation situation; on stationary sources, on the level and (or) volume or mass of emissions, discharges of pollutants; on the management of production and consumption waste; on measures to reduce the negative impact on the environment.
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<8> See: Federal Law No. 7-FZ of January 10, 2002 "On Environmental Protection" // Federal Law of the Russian Federation. 2002. N 2. Art. 133.
In addition, the institute of public environmental protection inspector has been restored (Article 68), which is a citizen who has expressed a desire to assist state supervisory authorities in environmental protection activities on a voluntary and gratuitous basis, can exercise public control in the field of environmental protection. At the same time, unlike a citizen who is not endowed with the status of a public environmental inspector, the latter has the right to take measures to ensure the safety of physical evidence at the places where offenses were committed.
Changes regarding the protection of citizens' rights, including environmental ones, have also occurred in civil procedure legislation. In accordance with Article 244.20 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation <9>, citizens are entitled to collectively appeal to the court in defense of the rights and legitimate interests of a group of persons. Given that environmental rights are non-material rights, collective protection of these rights seems to be the most convincing and effective in view of facilitating the process of proving violated rights.
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<9> See: Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation of November 14, 2002 N 138-FZ // SZ RF. 2002. N 46. St. 4532.
In recent years, the relevance of the application of the administrative procedure for the protection of environmental rights of citizens by contacting the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation has increased.
As of 2019, the importance of the right to a favorable environment for residents of Russia has increased almost 3 times compared to 2014, due to the actualization of problems of garbage accumulation (21%), pollution of reservoirs and poor drinking water quality (15%), air deterioration (12%) for society <10>.
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<10> See: The Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation for 2019.
While in 2020, the next Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation noted a decrease in appeals, in 2021 it was concluded that the consistent reduction in complaints received by him was due to measures taken by the state, in particular, established at the constitutional level, including in connection with the amendment of the Constitution Russia in 2020 Among the novelties are the powers of the Government of the Russian Federation to implement measures aimed at creating favorable living conditions for the population; reducing the negative impact of economic and other activities on the environment; creating conditions for the development of the system of environmental education of citizens, education of ecological culture (Article 114 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation) <11>.
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<11> See: Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation for 2020, p. 161.
The change in the vector of China's political development, due to which environmental protection has become the main focus of state policy, the lack of regulatory consolidation of the environmental rights of Chinese citizens at the constitutional level led to the development of environmental legislation in this country, for which an important step was the introduction in 2014. The Chinese Government has amended the Law of the People's Republic of China "On Environmental Protection" <12>.
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<12> See: The Law of the People's Republic of China "On Environmental Protection Wednesday" dated December 26, 1989. (in Chinese).
The Law of the People's Republic of China "On Environmental Protection" enshrines the rights of citizens in the field of environmental protection (Article 53): the right to access information on environmental protection, the right to participate in environmental protection, the right to control in the field of environmental protection.
In addition, citizens' opportunities to participate in environmental protection have expanded, and public organizations have been granted the right to file lawsuits in the people's courts in defense of public interests in the field of environmental protection (Article 58).
The development of the environmental legislation of the People's Republic of China has also led to the emergence of norms in the Law of the People's Republic of China "On Environmental Protection" regulating the procedure for disclosure of information and public participation in environmental protection. Chinese legislation establishes that organizations that directly or potentially pollute the environment may be subject to public control (art. 55). In this regard, it is declared that citizens, legal entities and other organizations have the right both to receive information about the environment and to report information they have discovered about environmental pollution or harm to it (Articles 53 and 57).
Thus, the amendments to the key environmental act of the People's Republic of China are aimed at improving the norms governing, among other things, environmental rights.
Human dignity, as well as his inherent rights, must be protected by all means available to him. The protection of environmental rights of both Russian and Chinese citizens is ensured through the use of active actions of legal entities in the application of methods to protect these rights.
In the Russian Federation, the protection of environmental rights is ensured by applying methods of protecting civil rights, taking into account the essence (nature) of the violated right and the consequences of its violation, which is the determining criterion when choosing the method of protection to be applied, enshrined in Article 12 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation <13> (hereinafter - the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).
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<13> See: The Civil Code of the Russian Federation (part one) of November 30, 1994 N 51-FZ // SZ RF. 1994. N 32. St. 3301.
The methods of protecting personal non-property rights, including environmental ones, based on the provisions of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation include: recognition of the right, restoration of the situation that existed before the violation of the right, suppression of actions that violate the right or create a threat of violation; invalidation of an act of a state body or local government, compensation for damages, compensation for moral damage, self-defense of the right and other methods provided for in the legislation, since their list is not exhaustive. Among them, both jurisdictional and non-jurisdictional ways of protecting rights are presented. At the same time, the choice of a specific method of protecting environmental rights to be applied is determined independently by the legal entity whose rights have been violated.
Thus, each holder of subjective environmental rights always has a choice: either to actively act in order to ensure the protection of environmental rights, or to refrain from taking certain actions. This means that the protection of environmental rights is made dependent on the decision taken by the subject of law aimed at ensuring their rights by applying to authorized state authorities and the court or with their independent protection.
The methods of protecting the environmental rights of Chinese citizens according to the current Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, which entered into force on January 1, 2021 <14> (hereinafter referred to as the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China), should include those enshrined in Articles 1167, 1179, 1233, 1234: termination of the offense, removal of obstacles; elimination of threats; restoration of the original situation, compensation for damage, compensation for moral damage. At the same time, Articles 181 and 182 of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China enshrine forms of self-defense: necessary defense and extreme necessity. At the same time, the independent protection of the rights of Chinese citizens should not go beyond its borders.
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<14> See: Civil Code of the People's Republic of China dated May 28, 2020.
The environmental legislation of both Russia and China does not directly define ways to protect environmental rights, with the exception of the legal regulation in Chinese legislation of the activities of specialized environmental protection courts that consider disputes to protect exclusively public, and not personal interests in the field of environmental protection. The protection of personal environmental rights is carried out in a general manner, as well as other civil rights. For example, an analysis of the materials of the judicial practice of the People's Republic of China shows that specialized environmental protection courts significantly improve the quality and result of judicial review of disputes in this category of cases, therefore, in order to increase the effectiveness of protecting the environmental rights of Russian citizens, it seems advisable to create specialized environmental protection judges in the courts of general jurisdiction in the Russian Federation.
Thus, in order to choose the most effective way to protect environmental rights, the legal systems of the studied states have fixed various methods of protection, the application of which is possible by contacting authorized bodies, the court, or the use of independent actions aimed at ensuring the protection of environmental rights. At the same time, both in Russia and in China, the methods used to protect environmental rights can be used both separately and jointly.
Despite the non-identical approaches in securing environmental rights for citizens of the Russian and Chinese states and the lack of establishment of environmental rights at the level of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China <15>, the studied countries in their normative acts contain a sufficient number of norms that consolidate the legal possibilities of protecting these rights.
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<15> See: Constitution of the People's Republic of China of December 4, 1982.
Thus, the significant changes that have taken place over the past few years in the legal framework governing the protection of environmental rights of both Russian and Chinese citizens indicate the development of institutions for the protection of these rights. The accumulated experience in the field of protecting the environmental rights of citizens of the studied states is of interest in connection with the incorporation of certain positive legal mechanisms into national legal systems, including in order to improve law-making in the designated countries.