Indemnification for harm caused to health of a person by an ecological offence

The current state of the environment in Russia causes a reasonable alarm. The negative factors of the environment (pollution of atmospheric air, water, food, physical factors - noise, electromagnetic fields, etc.) exert the increasing impact on the health condition of the population. However, the specifics of indemnification for the harm caused to the life and health of a person by an ecological offense are yet not adequately investigated. In the article the authors set a research objective - to investigate the mechanism of compensation for the ecological harm caused to the health of the citizens. Methods: the methodological framework of the research is a set of methods of scientific knowledge among which the main are the methods of system analysis, historicism, and the comparative law method. Results: in the article the modern problems of indemnification for the harm caused to the life and health of the citizens by the influence of the earlier polluted environment are investigated and it is proved that such harm can be compensated in three main ways: by ecological insurance, in a judicial proceeding, and also in an administrative (public) order. Conclusions: there are a number of shortcomings of the operating procedures of compensation for ecological harm to the health of the citizens covered by the civil and ecological legislation, connected with calculating the extent of the harm caused (including compensations for moral harm); lack of the accurate mechanism of bringing offenders to the compensation for ecological harm; the process of proving the guilt of persons who caused the ecological harm is insufficiently regulated. One of the ways of solving this complex of problems could become the adoption of the special Federal law “On Indemnification for Harm Caused to Life and Health of Citizens by Ecological Offences” which could detail the order and ways of compensation for ecological harm caused to life and health of the citizens. The bill of such a law was drafted twenty years ago; however, it has not been adopted as yet which demands the correction.