Subjects Ensuring Environmental Safety in Ukraine

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive study of entities responsible for environmental safety in Ukraine through the prism of public authority activities and administrative and legal mechanisms implemented in the field of environmental protection. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the intensification of environmental threats under current conditions, in particular as a result of prolonged anthropogenic activity, structural imbalances in the sphere of natural resource use, as well as the consequences of large-scale armed aggression against Ukraine, which has caused significant damage to natural resources, infrastructure facilities and ecosystems in general. In this context, environmental security is not only a component of state environmental policy, but also an important element of national security that requires effective administrative and legal support.

The methodological basis of the study consists of systemic-structural and functional approaches, the application of which made it possible to identify and substantiate a three-level model of entities ensuring environmental security. The formal-legal method was used to analyze the regulatory framework governing the competence of the respective entities and the procedures for administrative-jurisdictional response in the field of environmental protection. Methods of analysis, synthesis, and generalization were applied to identify inconsistencies in the powers of public administration entities and to formulate practical recommendations for improving the administrative-legal mechanism for ensuring environmental security.

It is substantiated that the system for ensuring environmental safety in Ukraine is complex, multi-level, and multifunctional, encompassing a wide range of actors with different scopes and content of powers. This system includes general-competence authorities, specially authorized central executive bodies, state supervision (control) bodies, local self-government authorities, and other subjects of public administration that perform control, supervisory, permitting, and administrative-jurisdictional functions in the environmental sphere. The article demonstrates that public authorities play a key role in shaping and implementing environmental safety mechanisms, as they are empowered not only to prevent environmental offenses but also to apply measures of administrative coercion and to ensure that offenders are brought to administrative liability.

The study proves that the effectiveness of ensuring environmental safety largely depends on the clear normative delineation of competences, the coherence of forms and methods of activity, and the absence of duplication or gaps in legal regulation. Particular attention is paid to the forms and methods of administrative-jurisdictional activity, including state environmental supervision (control), proceedings in cases of administrative environmental offenses, and the application of sanctions. The article also analyzes the peculiarities of exercising public authority under martial law and in the post-war period, showing that the state is developing special methodologies for calculating environmental damage caused by armed aggression, which indicates the institutionalization of the “wartime” dimension of environmental safety.

The practical significance of the results lies in the possibility of using the proposed functional differentiation of subjects and their instruments to improve control procedures, documentation of violations, and the preparation of legally robust materials in cases of administrative environmental offenses.