The outcome of the discussion session on regulating the environmental operations of businesses will be submitted to field-specific state departments to be further worked through
On 18 May, the discussion session on “The development of legal mechanisms for regulating the environmental operations of businesses” was held. It was organised by PJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel in collaboration with law firm Pepeliaev Group as a part of the VII St Petersburg International Legal Forum. The session was moderated by Alexander Zavtrik, Head of the Legal Department at PJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel and Sergey Pepeliaev, Pepeliaev Group's Managing Partner The representatives of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Ministry of Economic Development, the field-specific Committee at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, as well as representatives of the academic community and big business took part in the discussion session.
The guests played a full part in the discussion: they were offered the chance to vote for specific measures related to stimulating the environmental operations of businesses. In particular, there were questions: should the government primarily rely on administrative or economic measures when solving environmental problems; what decisions should be taken in the field of administrative regulation; whether economic incentives are enough for environmental activity; what are the optimal mechanisms of tax incentives to make businesses more environmentally friendly, and many other questions.
Therefore, both participants in the hall as well as experts interviewed in advance related that it is necessary to increase the statutory use of economic and legal incentives for users of natural resources to behave responsibly with respect to environmental matters.
“A key task of the government is to create the optimum statutory framework to maintain a sustainable balance between the economy and ecology, between constant industrial growth and the quality of the environment," says Alexander Zavtrik. "This task is impossible to solve without close interaction and dialogue between all interested parties, i.e. the government, the business community, and independent experts. Our discussion session became a perfect platform for expert discussion of legal mechanisms that stimulate the mitigation of a negative impact on the environment and allowed us to develop specific steps to improve environmental legislation”.
Sergey Pepeliaev pointed to a key task to improve environmental legislation. “Environmental payments are an important legal instrument for caring for the environment, which encourages business to treat it carefully," he said. "Such payments should comply with two criteria: funds should be spent on environmental programmes and the calculation procedure should take into account the payer’s investments in industrial ecology. However, neither criterion is complied with in Russia: the received funds are not ring-fenced and are spent on anything. It is necessary to give their main (incentivising) purpose back to the payments, so that they will be no longer considered just another fiscal burden”.
The conclusions reached by the participants in the discussion as recommendations for the improvement of environmental legislation and the outcome of the voting processed by independent experts will soon be published. They will be sent to field-specific state departments to be further analysed and worked through.