Legal issues of digitalization of environmental accounting data

Abstract

This paper raises the issue of the need to introduce the term “environmental accounting” into legal circulation, which has existed in economic sciences since the 1970s, and in environmental and legal science – as “state accounting in the field of the natural environment”. As for Ukrainian legislation, it does not contain a name that unites many types of cadastres, registers, registers, reports, and other environmental information. It was established that in the system of Ukrainian legislation, cadastres of natural resources, accounting for objects harmful to the environment, accounting for substances harmful to the environment, as well as factors of harmful impact on the environment (chemical, physical, biological) are subject to legal regulation, within the framework of the outlined topic. Unfortunately, many of these accounting data are closed, incomplete, or not present at all. At the same time, at the international and European level, these processes are rapidly developing, and today there is already a need to expand such data, by including in the relevant accounting resources information on issued permits for the use of natural resources, payment of environmental payments, fines, production of environmentally safe products, etc. Based on this, a proposal is put forward on the need to systematize Ukrainian legislation on environmental accounting by developing and adopting a special regulation that would meet international and European requirements in this area. A proposal is also made on the need to transform the provisions of Articles 23 and 24 of the Law of Ukraine “On Environmental Protection” by combining them and expanding their content, including all types of environmental accounting. It was established that Ukraine has already commenced the adaptation of legislation on this issue, specifically by establishing requirements for digitalization of all environmental data, i.e., the creation of a single ecological electronic platform, which currently is only at the beginning of its development.