Legal Support for the Prevention and Mitigation of Chemical and Biological Risks to the Environment: Recommendations for Municipalities, Regions and the State

Abstract

Chemical and biological risks increasingly affect the environment not as isolated incidents but as complex threats to industrial facilities, waste management systems, and water bodies, requiring sanitary restrictions, emergency response, and provision of public access to environmental information. Russian law contains several regulatory regimes relevant to these risks, yet legal research still lacks a coherent model explaining how municipal, regional and federal authorities should prevent environmental harm before it occurs. This study aims to substantiate legal instruments for preventing and mitigating chemical and biological environmental risks through a clearer distribution of public responsibilities, early risk detection and interagency data exchange. The research relies on theoretical legal analysis, a risk-based approach and comparative reference to foreign studies on chemical risk governance, the One Health approach and environmental emergency management. The article shows that the existing Russian framework remains fragmented: municipalities are territorially closest to risk sources but often lack access to monitoring data; regions do not always integrate sanitary, environmental and industrial information into a single risk module; federal regulation has not yet introduced a cross-sectoral legal concept of chemical and biological environmental risk. The study proposes local risk maps, emergency information-exchange procedures, a regional monitoring module and a federal definition linking environmental, sanitary, industrial and emergency-response rules. The results contribute to the development of a preventive legal model of environmental safety focused on risk diagnosis rather than only post-damage compensation.