CATEGORY OF “ECOLOGICAL LOSSES” IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND LEGAL REALITY AND ITS IMPORTANCE FOR ENSURING RATIONAL NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

The paper has demonstrated that term “environmental losses” not existing in the legislation is often applied in the theory of environmental law and in law enforcement. In doctrinal sources, legal stances of higher courts, specific court decisions, “environmental losses” are used in a narrow sense. Environmental losses are associated solely with unlawful actions causing or allegedly causing harm to the environment. The paper contains the author’s definition of “environmental losses” in a broader ecological and legal contexts. The author suggests that environmental losses mean irrecoverable or long-term recoverable losses of individual components of the natural environment, natural and natural-anthropogenic objects, as well as violation of direct and reverse links between the elements of an ecological system emerging as the result of both unlawful and lawful actions of natural users or events of natural origin. A broader understanding of “environmental losses” is relevant to the environmental legal regulation of legal liability or economic regulation in the field of environmental protection. Environmental losses are classified according to the nature of the loss of a natural resource potential (absolute and relative) depending on renewability of natural resources (arising from the use of non-renewable natural resources, the long-term restoration of renewable natural resources, and the depletion of renewable natural resources). The paper has proven the importance of differentiation of environmental losses to separate rational nature management from other types of nature management and its effective legal support.