Vyphanova, G.V. Problems of the ensuring the access to environmental information at the turn of the twentieth anniversary of the Constitution of Russia

Abstract: The necessity of the realization and protection of fundamental rights and freedom of citizens became actual in the twentieth anniversary of the Russian Constitution. The article examines the legal problems of ensuring access to environmental information, including the realization of the constitutional right of citizens to reliable information about the state of the environment. Access to such information is a condition for the realization of other constitutional rights of citizens – the right to a healthy environment, to damage compensation caused to their health or property by any environmental offense, as well as the right to health protection. The guarantee of access to the environmental information should constitute Russia’s accession to the Aarhus Convention. Due to this fact there are some suggestions to improve environmental law, taking into account foreign experience. A comparative analysis of the Russian ecological, sanitary-epidemiological, information and other legislation, as well as foreign legislation in the field of environmental information, providing access to environmental information in accordance with the provisions of the Aarhus Convention, has been made. The improvement of Russian legislation, aimed at the legal regulation of relations in the field of environmental information in a systematic manner, has been proposed. The necessity of development and adoption of the federal law on environmental information is proved, its structure is given, the composition of environmental information is determined, the proposals have been made to align the sub-legislative regulatory legal acts with this law, as well as to increase the effectiveness of administrative responsibility for offenses in the field of environmental information and to fill the existing gaps.

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