The author of the paper has developed theoretical provisions of the legal ensuring of environmental education and upbringing in Ukraine aimed at their systemic perception as an independent direction of the state’s activity, at ascertaining their legal nature, as well as ecological and managerial capabilities, and at formulating practical recommendations and propositions for improving the legislation in this area.
It has been substantiated that the educational and upbringing (moral and ethical) components of human development play an important role in scientific research, international and national reformation and evolutionary processes. The author has suggested own definition of «environmental education» as an activity of educational institutions (including pre-school children institutions within the system of general secondary, vocational and higher education, advanced training and re-training of personnel), scientific establishments, institutions of postgraduate education, which is an integral part of the general education process and is aimed at forming complex, up-to-date knowledge in persons according to the regularities of environmental processes, their development within the «human-nature» system, as well as the skills of their application in the process of everyday life, as well as professional activities. The author has also formulated the content of the term of “environmental education” – it is the activities of a wide range of people are aimed at forming in a person of moral and ethical values and orientations based on modern ecological ideology in order to form the ecological culture of a person and his ecological outlook, ensuring respectful attitude to nature, active civic position, the formation of a coherent world’s vision, the ability to make personal decisions and to be responsible for them throughout the whole life of a person.
The author has given the reasons for the necessity of considering the ecological imperative as an independent branch principle of environmental law, which is oriented on the implementation of the model of sustainable development, formation of its ideological principles, as well as creation of preconditions for ensuring the effectiveness of the ideological mechanism of environmental law. It has been proved that environmental education and upbringing should be included in the list of natural environmental human rights, which should be reflected in the positive law by means of not only legal consolidation, but also definition of guarantees of their realization, as well as measures for their provision.
It has been grounded that the organization of environmental education and upbringing is considered as an independent, permanent direction of the activities of the ecological management agencies, and therefore has all the features of the ecological management function.
It has been argued that the current system of assessing the knowledge acquired by individuals during the study of legal disciplines does not take into account in any way the ecological and legal component. The author has proved the necessity of carrying out the audit of issues of qualification selection of judges and inclusion of the issues of knowing the norms of environmental law into the test base for selecting candidates for a judge position, as well as for the advanced training programs of current judges. Similar measures need to be implemented for conducting professional tests of other categories of lawyers, in particular defence attorneys and notaries.
