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Legal Protection of Flora
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2.3.2. Legal Protection of Flora
Flora, with its variety of species and areas of growing, is defined in the environmental legislation of the three riparian countries as a separate object of legal protection. At the same time, member-countries’ Forest Codes regulate only some relations pertaining to the protection and use of flora. However forests and flora should not be regarded as equivalents, as there is a certain relation of subordination between them. Forest should be viewed as a part of flora. As matters stand, forest law regulates relations in respect of forest tree vegetation (lignosa). As for flora outside forests, its protection and use are regulated in an unsystematic, fragmentary manner in the legislation on land, water, mineral resources and specially protected areas. It is doubtful that the above manage to cover the entire spectrum of plants that do not belong to forest vegetation. In Ukraine, the Law “On Flora” was adopted in 1999 to regulate relations in the sphere of protection, use and restoration of Ukraine’s flora. According to this Law, the following requirements should be met in undertaking activities affecting flora: conservation of natural geographical, species, population and coenotic diversity of flora; conservation of natural habitats of wild plants and original plant communities; sustainable and scientifically justifiable use of natural plant resources; practical measures aimed to restore flora components (Article 5).
The following flora protection measures are foreseen in the Law:
- establishing norms and rules of the protection, use and restoration of flora components;
- prohibiting and limiting the use of natural plant resources when necessary;
- conducting environmental assessment and taking other steps to prevent damaging flora components in the course of economic activities;
- protecting land grown with flora components from erosion, mudflows, floods, waterlogging, eutrophication, salinization, soil drought, solidification, littering, contamination with industrial and municipal waste and discharges, with chemical and radioactive substances, etc;
- creating components of natural reserve stock;
- organizing research that facilitates the conservation and restoration of flora components;
- developing an information system on flora components and raising public awareness of the necessity to protect them;
- establishing a state inventory system of flora components and conducting state monitoring of flora protection, use and restoration;
- entering rare and endangered plant species into the Red Book of Ukraine, and rare plant communities – into the Green Book of Ukraine;
- envisaging responsibility under law for breaking the rules of protecting and using natural plant resources (Article 26).
In the Republic of Belarus, a draft law “On Flora” was passed in the first reading in December 2002. In the Russian Federation, these relations are not regulated by law. Therefore, there is a need for the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation to adopt their national laws “On Flora”.
