In the midst of Ukraine's integration into the European Union, intensification of cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and ensuring sustainable development it becomes imperative for our country to shape in the environmental law branch the priority of human and civil rights and freedoms, the rule of law, transparency and openness of activities of public authorities, local self-governments and civil society organizations, to create constructive synergies between them, to enhance their responsibility; to involve general public into the processes of state and regional environmental policy making and implementation as well as into the processes of local interest issues addressing, etc. Considering the circumstances, along with the civilizational challenges, Ukraine particularly needs to strengthen law-making, to modernize the environmental law doctrine views, concepts of which will guide the revision and the renewal of scientific provisions, state policy, legal consciousness, and, consequently, law enforcement. The latest philosophical and legal ideas should form the basis for these fundamental changes, therefore it will positively affect the development of environmental legislation (legislative environmental process). Further institutionalization of the natural law doctrine basic provisions in the environmental legislation becomes a prerequisite for the continued development of law-making and statehood.
The purpose of the study is to conduct a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the natural law doctrine impact on the genesis of environmental legislation, law and legal relations, as well as to outline promising avenues of environmental law doctrine establishment and determination of special features of its application in state environmental policy making and improving, further systematization of environmental legislative framework within the European integration.
The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical basis for the development of environmental legislation of Ukraine in the context of the natural law doctrine, as well as the analysis of content and essence of the concept of “natural environmental law” as a component of the multidimensional and multifunctional phenomenon of “natural law”. Based on the latest methodological approaches, the environmental law doctrine is considered as a branch legal one, whereas natural law doctrine is viewed as a general legal phenomenon and the highest order category, as the basis of environmental law, state environmental policy, which is institutionalized in environmental legislation and is an integrating set of legal and scientific interpretations and assertions of the law, within which legal forms of knowledge of law and of legal phenomena, principles, concepts, terms, constructions are developed, as well as methods, means, techniques of perception, understanding and interpretation of its sources, systems, structures, etc. are substantiated.
With these considerations, the author offers a general description and definitions of such basic environmental law terms as “system of environmental legislation”, “environmental legislation”, “environmental interest”, “environmental legal capacity”, “environmental law doctrine”, “natural environmental relations”, “natural environmental rights and obligations” etc.
The author promotes feasibility of drafting of the Law of Ukraine “On Civil Society” that will ensure establishment of core values (including environmental) of relations between a democratic state and civil society. Thus, in this regard it is necessary to legislate on an environmental component, a civil society as the basis of democracy and the appropriate conditions for the effective interaction between the state, civil society and business for the sake of modernization of Ukraine, the welfare improving and wide equal opportunities ensuring. It can embody scientific concepts on the establishment of the environmental legal order and the environmental state.
