Contents of the right to a safe environment for life and health: a private law approach

The article is devoted to the analysis of the content of a person’s right to an environment safe for life and health. Scientific approaches to determining its content are analyzed. The presence of at least three approaches has been established: in the narrow sense, – as an environmental right of a person; as the right of a person to a safe environment, which includes the right to safe food and household products, to proper, safe and healthy conditions of work, living, education, etc. and in a broad sense, as the right to a safe environment for human existence. It is justified that the right to an environment that is safe for life and health should be understood in a broad sense, which is close to the right of an individual to safety, which has not yet acquired normative consolidation, however, is widely discussed in scientific schools. It has been proven that the right to an environment safe for life and health includes the right of a person to information about the state of the environment, the quality of food products, in particular, its collection, storage and distribution. The latter is a specification of the right to information, enshrined in Art. 34 of the Constitution of Ukraine. This allows us to draw a conclusion about the complex nature of this right. This approach is due to the desire of the legislator to move away from the outdated approach of limiting the right to a safe environment either exclusively to the ecological sphere, or only to the right to information about the state of the environment. It was concluded that safety in a broad sense is a state of risk control, a consequence of activities and measures aimed at its achievement. It is argued that the legal nature of the content of the rights of the right holder has a passive nature and is reduced to the right of a person to be in the specified controlled (free) state of the environment. Accordingly, these powers are opposed to a double obligation: not to violate the existing state of security, and the state and its bodies have an additional obligation to take actions within their competence aimed at creating and ensuring such conditions (the obligation to minimize and control risks and eliminate danger).