The duty of care for animals in environmental disasters: Lessons from the Kerch Strait oil spill #

Dmitrii Kuznetsov¹, Vladka Koi²

Abstract. This manuscript explores the legal and ethical concepts of duty of care in the context of an environmental disaster at sea, using the example of the fuel oil spill from the Volgoneft series tankers in the Kerch Strait on 15 December 2024. In the first days after the disaster, it was volunteers who took on the task of rescuing animals and cleaning the coast, acting without coordination or support from the state. The authors ask three main questions: (1) does national or international law protect animals as such, or does it care about their safety solely based on their usefulness as a ‘resource’ in purely human interests? (2) are there any basic legal or ethically based responsibilities that could motivate thousands of citizens to voluntarily help affected animals and ecosystems? (3) is any shift currently taking place in the paradigm of the relationship between humans, nature, and animals, marking a move away from anthropocentrism towards the harmonisation of humans’ relations with other species?

Having analysed the rich normative material, including judicial practice, the authors conclude that despite the noticeable eco-centricity of the modern legal framework, its main focus is the responsibilities of public entities. Thus, the tendency to perceive animals as sentient subjects cannot yet be called dominant either at the international or national level.

The authors suggest that the actions of volunteers are determined primarily by less specific ethical motives and feelings, not directly related to such a shift. The grassroots, collective character and spontaneity of such manifestations of empathy towards affected living beings can be considered evidence of a gradual paradigm shift. It is noted that additional interdisciplinary and empirical research is needed for a more detailed answer to the question of this shift.

The article demonstrates an eco-legal approach focused on the protection of ‘animals in general,’ which does not always coincide with the welfare of a particular animal. The authors point out that environmental regulations applicable to the case under consideration still fail to adequately address the consequences of pollution for individual animals, thereby not taking into account their sentience.

Keywords: Kerch Strait; oil spill; duty of care; animals; international law; volunteers; environmental disaster, anthropocentrism.

AI use disclosure statement. The authors declare that DeepL Translate was used for the preliminary translation of certain sources in Spanish, as indicated in the corresponding footnote. The grammar of the full manuscript was additionally checked using Grammarly.

A week later only a large skull and two shoulder-blades lay behind the barn; the rest had all been taken away. In summer a peasant, collecting bones, carried away these shoulder-blades and skull and put them to use.

Leo Tolstoy, Kholstomer³

Introduction #

On 15 December 2024, two Russian oil tankers of the ‘Volgoneft’ series sustained hull cracks during a severe storm in the Kerch Strait (Black Sea). The disaster resulted in significant oil spills of approximately 1,500 m^3^, making it one of the largest fuel oil spills in the Kerch Strait under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.⁴ For nearly two weeks, there was little coordinated response from the governmental authorities despite the efforts of the locals to save the situation, clean the affected coastal area and call for governmental/official intervention.

It was only in the last days of December 2024 that the authorities publicly acknowledged the spill and its environmental impact.⁵ Official sources initially labelled the spill as an ’extraordinary incident’⁶ while international environmental organisations, as well as locals volunteering on the spot, described it as an ecological disaster.⁷

Later, the Russian Emergency Ministry sent over 50 personnel, along with helicopters and tugboats. Despite these efforts, the spill resulted in extensive environmental damage, affecting beaches in Russia’s Krasnodar region as well as the occupied territories, including Crimea and the Berdiansk Spit.⁸ Over 173,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil were collected during cleanup operations.

Apart from polluting the seashores and exposing local people and tourists to a risk of poisoning by oil products, the biggest damage is done and is still being done to wildlife and the ecosystem of the region.⁹ According to media reports, the consequences of the disaster are yet to be assessed (should it be possible at all);¹⁰ however, several weeks after the spill, there were numerous messages and evidence of the deaths of dozens of dolphins and other small cetaceans, thousands of birds, and other organisms.¹¹ Even after being rescued by the volunteers, up to 95% of the birds died because of the fuel oil poisoning.¹² Ecologists predict irreparable harm to the ecosystem and the region’s biodiversity.¹³

In view of the reported condition of the tankers and similar incidents registered in earlier years, including in the area,¹⁴ it should not have been a surprise to the authorities that cracks like this, or similar catastrophes, might occur.¹⁵ It is also well-established in both domestic and international regulation that ships like this normally go through a long bureaucratic process of obtaining permission to transfer mazut and fuel products before they will be able to sail.¹⁶ Lastly, the Russian Federation accepts the internationally recognised rules regarding environmental harm, such as those relevant to the incident in question, under the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage (the CLC)¹⁷ and its additional Protocol, establishing the International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage,¹⁸ International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation (the OPRC),¹⁹ World Heritage Convention,²⁰ etc.

In short, the Government bears clearly defined and binding obligations under both domestic and international law, requiring it not only to be prepared for such incidents but also to act proactively to prevent environmental harm and protect wildlife and ecosystems. We discuss these obligations in more detail in the first section below.

With that, during the first days and weeks after the mazut spill, thousands of volunteers came to the polluted region and began cleaning the beaches and rescuing suffering animals and birds.²¹ In this text, we attempt to reconstruct or at least to try to understand the legal arguments (if any) underlying the volunteers’ actions.

Addressing the example of oil fuel pollution in the Kerch Strait from a legal perspective, we posit several questions. First, what is the status of ecosystems, wildlife, species and similar phenomena under the current domestic and international law regimes? What is the attitude of the regulatory mechanisms towards these phenomena? Are they regarded as entities deserving protection in and of themselves, independently of any utility to human beings, or only as a resource — whether economic, ecological, or otherwise — whose protection is justified solely because and insofar as it serves human interests?

The second question is whether there are any core legal (i.e. international and constitutional) or ethical duties, which would force or inspire thousands of citizens, often living as far as thousands of kilometres away from the disaster, to act and save wild birds and animals from oil fuel poisoning. We wonder whether they were guided by a conscious understanding of the state’s international obligations and/or constitutional provisions on environmental protection, a subconscious alignment with fundamental values enshrined at the international or constitutional level, or by an increasingly expansive interpretation of citizenship duties, such as a duty of care.²²

Finally, the third, and the most complicated question for legal practitioners, is whether the reaction to the disaster in the Kerch Strait illustrates a shift in societal attitude toward wildlife and whether the duty of care for nature is changing the paradigm of the Anthropocene existed for hundreds of years towards another, possibly more equal relations between humans and other species?

Our research is primarily doctrinal and qualitative since we will be discussing selected legal sources, including constitutional and international law provisions, and analysing selected court cases. To a great extent, it is also based on the application of comparative methodology as understood by Tushnet,²³ Dixon and Landau,²⁴ and Hirschl,²⁵ among others.

In this text, we will be using such terms as ‘wildlife’, ’ecosystem’, ‘biodiversity’ and a number of others.²⁶ Should there exist one, the said notions are used in their legal meaning as provided for by legal provisions or customary norms. References and explanations to and from legal sources are provided in the corresponding sections of the manuscript. We do not have special expertise or training as biologists or oceanologists; thus, we will not be referring to terminology or debates (there are many), specific to the natural science fields. We aim to proceed with the legal debate and invoke legal arguments which potentially could have implications for environmental litigations both domestically and internationally, and for further empirical research, as we discuss by the end of this paper.

In view of the above, the article consists of three sections. The first section analyses the existing international and domestic obligations of states, with a focus on the Russian Federation’s obligations with regard to nature, environment, wildlife, and individual animal welfare. The second section analyses the selected case law from Russia and elsewhere, where citizens were acting for nature’s cause, often contrary to their own or other governments’ interests. We are particularly interested in their legal argumentation and the latter’s reception by courts. The final section presents our theoretical reflections on the purported shift in legal approaches to their respective roles in human life and in the relationships among humans, animals, and nature.

1. The existing international and constitutional framework #

In this section, we will summarise the existing international (1) and domestic constitutional (2) obligations that the Russian Federation bears with respect to wildlife, ecosystems, and individual animals. We will not discuss more general environmental obligations; however, where appropriate or where lex specialis does not exist or where it is being developed, we will address more general sources.

1.1. International obligations #

There are several international treaties establishing common regimes for (1) liability in cases of oil spills, including that related to environmental damage, which could be qualified as a liability for failing to fulfill the negative duty of care; and (2) wildlife and ecosystems protection in cases of oil spills, which could be seen as measures to fulfill the positive duty of care. Below, we name key documents and the relevant states’ obligations.

1.1.1. The liability in cases of an oil spill #

Following a series of major oil spills caused by tanker accidents between 1967 and 2002, a comprehensive legal ‘safety net’ was established, encompassing international (maritime and environmental) norms, national (maritime and environmental) law, and private law instruments. At the international level, frameworks such as the CLC and the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage (the FUND)²⁷ set out procedures for imposing liability and claiming compensation in cases of oil pollution. The substantive scope of applicability of such treaties²⁸ extends to a broad range of vessels and facilities, encompassing FPSOs,²⁹ FSUs,³⁰ MODUs,³¹ oil barges, hybrid vessels, etc., i.e., neither solely oil tankers nor exclusively vessels ‘…actually carrying oil in bulk as cargo and during any voyage following such carriage.’

In cases of oil spills from tankers, the parties responsible are generally held liable:

• in two main forms: (1) financial payments, and (2) practical remedial actions;

• across four principal areas: (1) administrative, meaning monetary penalties (fines) typically established on the national level by the flag state or coastal state authorities; (2) civil, embracing compensations for tangible losses, such as damage to ships, cargo, port infrastructure, and other property, as well as loss of income, and provided for in the CLC and the FUND; (3) environmental, also mentioned in the CLC and the FUND and comprising both (a) financial compensation for environmental damage (e.g., payments to the affected states and/or communities) and (b) actions for actual environmental restoration and cleanup; (4) reputational, managed through national legislation and private law instruments and involving (a) financial compensations for the losses due to reputational harm (e.g., loss of contracts, shareholder claims, adverse PR campaigns) and (b) actions aimed at rebuilding public trust and restoring the company’s standing.

Expenses arising from liability for oil pollution are covered by mandatory insurance that shipowners are required to maintain under international frameworks such as the CLC, as well as national regulations.

In this paper, when discussing liability, we focus on the area of environmental liability in the form of practical remedial actions, as provided for in the OPRC³² and the MARPOL³³ conventions, and not in the CLC and the FUND conventions, which are limited to solely financial compensation for environmental damage. With that, Russia has also transposed the requirements of the latter into national legislation,³⁴ yet in 1999–2001.

1.1.2. Wildlife/ecosystems/environment protection in cases of oil spills #

This regime is mainly established by the two groups of international treaties: (a) specialised conventions (such as the OPRC and the MARPOL) and norms (such as arts. 192-237 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea — the UNCLOS³⁵) on marine pollution; (b) general ’environmental’ treaties with no particular specialisation on oil spills, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (the CBD),³⁶ the World Heritage Convention, the UNFCCC³⁷ and the Paris Agreement.³⁸

1.1.2.1. Specific treaties on oil spill pollution #

Both the OPRC and the MARPOL aim at the prevention of and response to marine pollution, but their focuses and addressees differ.

The OPRC addresses States, requiring them to prepare, respond, and cooperate effectively through national emergency plans and contingency systems for various oil pollution incidents, with the aim of protecting the marine environment. It focuses on oil as a polluting agent, regardless of the source of pollution (not limiting it to tankers or even ships, but also including coastal oil facilities, offshore drilling units, etc.).

The MARPOL divides its requirements between States (lawmaking, institutions, procedures) and shipowners, ship operators, and other related actors (day-to-day compliance, record-keeping, technical maintenance) and establishes preventive measures against various types of ship-related pollution at sea. It focuses on ships as a source of pollution, rather than on the specific polluting agent (not limiting it to crude oil, but also including other petroleum substances, garbage, sewage, noxious liquid substances (NLS), and even air pollution).

While the OPRC is more concerned with national frameworks, the MARPOL is more operational, with its requirement for ships to obtain 5-year certificates confirming their compliance with marine pollution prevention standards and regular surveys. It is also the MARPOL (apart from some other IMO resolutions³⁹ designating various seas as a ‘particularly sensitive sea area’⁴⁰ which do not extend to the seas under Russian jurisdiction) that goes beyond general notions like ‘marine environment’, ’environmental impact / environmental consequences’, ‘sensitive ecological conditions’, etc., to slightly more particular and life-centred (though hardly less anthropocentric) concepts such as ’living resources’ and ‘marine life’ or ‘aquatic life’.

In contrast to these two conventions, the UNCLOS is a framework convention with a source- and pollutant-neutral scope that sets what must be done but not how. Its provisions regarding marine environment pollution establish general duties for states to protect and preserve this environment, regardless of both sources of pollution (land-based, vessel-based, dumping, seabed activities, atmospheric sources, etc.) and polluting agents (oil, chemicals, waste, heat, noise, etc.).

The UNCLOS is also much broader in terminology related to the preservation of the welfare of the marine environment and its components. It refers not only to ’living resources’⁴¹ and ‘marine life’⁴² but also to ‘habitat’⁴³, ’ecosystem(s)’⁴⁴, ’ecological conditions’⁴⁵, ’ecological balance’⁴⁶, ’living organisms’⁴⁷, ‘fauna’⁴⁸, ‘populations’ (of species)⁴⁹ or ‘stocks’⁵⁰, ‘species’⁵¹, and even specific types of animal classes (‘marine mammals’), groups (‘fish’), or infraorders (‘cetaceans’). However, according to the parlance of the Convention, all measures to protect this rich variety of ‘objects’ are guided exclusively by human interest in their use.⁵² This logically corresponds to the Convention’s undeniably anthropocentric approach to the marine environment and to the sea as a whole, — ‘area of the seabed, ocean floor and the subsoil thereof, … as well as its resources’⁵³ — which the Convention treats as ’the common heritage of mankind, the exploration and exploitation of which shall be carried out for the benefit of mankind’⁵⁴ and not as something valuable in and of itself, which has allegedly been guiding the volunteers in the Krasnodar region.

Russia has implemented the OPRC, the MARPOL, and the UNCLOS requirements regarding the national system for preparedness/response (including national contingency and oil pollution emergency plans),⁵⁵ incident reporting, cooperation, mutual assistance, and other measures to ‘prevent, reduce, and control pollution of the marine environment’.⁵⁶ With that, there are concerns⁵⁷ about the lack of control over aging vessels (including tankers) still in service despite being 2-3 times older than the maximum vessels’ operational age common among major world oil companies. Such vessels are hard to track and poorly maintained, posing the risks of major oil spills and other disasters, and threatening not only the safety of navigation but also the global efforts to protect the marine environment.

1.1.2.2. General ’environmental’ treaties #

The CBD, of which Russia has been a part since 1995⁵⁸, lists the following obligations. First of all, the states have to ensure that the “activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.”⁵⁹ The state parties are obliged to develop and implement domestic programmes aimed at the conservation of biodiversity,⁶⁰ monitor the components of biodiversity “requiring urgent conservation measures,”⁶¹ and “rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species” (both in-situ and ex-situ).⁶² The said obligations are also complemented by the obligation to cooperate.⁶³

Per the World Heritage Convention, Russia, insofar as possible, is obliged to protect, conserve, and present its natural heritage, accompanied by the duty to cooperate with other states.⁶⁴

As of 2025, there are 11 properties situated in Russia and inscribed on the World Heritage List.⁶⁵ Among those objects, UNESCO mentions the Western Caucasus (included in the list in 1999), with “a great diversity of ecosystems with important endemic plants and wildlife.”⁶⁶ This object does not include any parts of the Black Sea shores.⁶⁷ With that, the objects of protection under the 1972 Convention are defined by such criteria as “outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view,”⁶⁸ which is problematic by itself since it implements the idea that only those natural objects (in a broader sense) are worth protecting, which have value not as parts of nature per se, but as valuable objects for humankind.

Finally, among the treaties with more general application, one could not help but mention the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. Relevant obligations therefrom include, for example, an obligation to mitigate states’ CO2 emissions and combat anthropogenic pollution.⁶⁹ These obligations, even though not directly applicable to the protection of ecosystems or endangered non-human species and individual animals, create a general regulatory framework and shared goals to be developed in specialised international provisions.

At the same time, existing international legal frameworks exhibit a marked asymmetry: they impose obligations to protect ecosystems, biodiversity, or heritage as collective entities, yet they do not recognise the interests, welfare, or potential rights of individual animals. This drastically differs from the approach toward the interests and rights of humans. While international human rights law (e.g., the ICCPR, the ECHR) enshrines individual autonomy, dignity, and entitlements, consistently prioritising the dignity and welfare of each human being, thus making them the primary subjects of legal protection, no equivalent status is granted to non-human animals. International environmental law continues to treat animals collectively, primarily in terms of species value or ecosystem functions. This anthropocentric and utilitarian bias effectively renders individual animals legally invisible.

The CBD and the World Heritage Convention are emblematic of this gap. Grounded in a species- or ecosystem-level conception of protection, they subordinate the well-being of individual animals to that of broader aggregates, addressing it only insofar as it aligns with the interests of the species or ecosystem as a whole. Nor does the issue end there. As we will also see in the following sections on national legislation and case law, the interests of such broader aggregates are often legally framed as self-evidently linked to human interests and are interpreted in light of those interests or even as their derivatives. Even provisions ostensibly aimed at protecting animals’ interests — such as those concerning the prevention of cruelty to animals or animal welfare — construe animals as having neither independent interests nor intrinsic moral value.

Thus, while international treaties may establish certain environmental obligations that encompass animals, they impose no duty to protect or rescue individual animals, or even to consider their interests, unless the survival of a species, population, or ecosystem is at risk. It is, hence, not a source for alleged duties of individuals or volunteers towards the environment and animals per se.

1.2. Domestic obligations #

The 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation was significantly amended in 2020.⁷⁰ As stated during the promotional campaign for the amendments, one of the declared goals was to ‘protect the environment and animals’,⁷¹ while in the Presidential address introducing the idea of amending the Basic Law, one cannot find a word about nature or animals.⁷² Be that as it may, Article 114, listing the powers of the Federal Government, was expanded and, among other things, the power to ‘undertake measures aimed at creating favourable conditions for the life of the population, reduction of the negative impact of business and other activities on the environment, preservation of unique natural and biological diversity of the country, and forming a responsible attitude in society towards animals’ was added.⁷³ The Government is also responsible for ‘creating conditions for developing the system of ecological education for citizens and upbringing ecological culture’.⁷⁴ The above wording is bold, terminologically unclear, and de facto adds nothing to the understanding of the real relationships between the Government and nature and animals.⁷⁵ Similarly, the Constitution is silent about the status of animals, their subjectivity, or guarantees (if any) of their constitutional protection.

In 2018, the State Duma adopted a law ‘On Responsible Treatment of Animals’.⁷⁶ The law defines the notion of treatment as ‘keeping, using (application) of animals, carrying out activities related to handling animals without owners, and carrying out other activities provided for by this Federal Law, as well as performing other actions concerning animals that affect their life and health’.⁷⁷ The Law is grounded in the principles of ‘humanism’ and ‘virtues’ treatment of animals.⁷⁸ With that, while dividing the competence between the Federation and the Subjects of the Federation, it says nothing about who is responsible for the well-being of animals, nor which competent authority is responsible for the compensation of harm caused by different actors. Article 20 of the Law contains a provision allowing certain forms of ‘public control in the field of treatment of animals’, allegedly recognising that it is not solely for the Government to be responsible for the well-being of animals and that both non-governmental organisations and citizens have the right to exercise such control.

Ironically, the provision has two major flaws, making it hardly implementable. First, although the Law endows public inspectors with certain rights — such as recording violations and notifying the authorities — it establishes no reciprocal duties on the part of those being inspected or on the authorities to act upon such reports. Notably, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that inspectors can effectively exercise these powers, particularly in situations where the alleged violator opposes entry, examination, or documentation activities. Moreover, the law fails to establish any formal procedure requiring state authorities to act upon or even seriously consider the information submitted by public inspectors. This lack of procedural safeguards and institutional responsibility renders the implementation of public oversight both precarious and largely ineffective. Second, given the Russian legislation on foreign agents⁷⁹ and the Ministry of Justice’s practice of labeling environmental initiatives as such, granting these powers to NGOs is solely a performative gesture.⁸⁰

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (hereinafter — the CC RF) has not said much about animals or ecosystems. The only explicit reference to state obligations with respect to biodiversity and protection of ecosystems, referred to the CBD, was made by the CC RF in 2018, while it said nothing about animals, their rights, or well-being.⁸¹ In one of the most recent cases, in 2024, the CC RF limited the power of the authorities of the territorial entities (subjects) of the Federation to kill animals without owners by accepting it only in exceptional cases, where all other measures have been tried and when an animal in question is the only way to protect human life.⁸²

Finally, in view of the cause of this paper, a review of the practice on environmental crimes, prepared by the RF Supreme Court, is of some interest.⁸³ The Supreme Court stated that a general jurisdiction court, when assessing the damage that occurred as a result of environmental crimes, should be guided by the rates and methods approved by the Government of the Russian Federation, in effect at the time the crime was committed,⁸⁴ thus assessing this group of cases rather formally. The Court also did not mention animals or any methods of assessing alleged damage.

In short, domestic legislation on the matter is rather scarce and formalistic in its approaches. It regards animals and nature in a conservative way as objects, having value for economic activities and for-profit businesses, mentioning their importance within the context of human lives and well-being. The authorities’ reactions to the 2024 Kerch oil spill, as well as other similar incidents, which we mentioned in the introduction, are yet another illustration of such an approach.

2. Domestic obligations in other jurisdictions #

2.1. Constitutional regulation #

In terms of the protection of the environment, animals, wildlife, and similar categories, constitutions vary significantly both in their approach to protection (whether these entities are regarded as objects of protection or as subjects of rights) and in the underlying reasoning for such protection (whether it is grounded in their intrinsic value or in human interest in their existence and/or well-being). Some categorisations might include in the first group constitutional acts protecting the environment, often within the context of protecting the rights of future generations (i.e., in the interest of humans), for example, Article 20(a) of the German Basic Law,⁸⁵ or Section 24 of the Constitution of South Africa⁸⁶. A similar approach can be found in the Constitution of Bolivia.⁸⁷

The second group of constitutional acts focuses more explicitly on the general rights of nature, with the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution serving as a prominent and perhaps the only clear example⁸⁸, notably through its use of the specific legal category of Nature (Pachamama) in Articles 10⁸⁹, 71⁹⁰, 72⁹¹, and throughout Chapter 7, to which the article belongs.

The third group of constitutional acts explicitly mentions and protects animals, with varying parlance and depth of obligations vis-à-vis animals. Terminology here is particularly important because, inter alia, it predetermines the object of constitutional protection — whether it is an individual animal (as in provisions mentioning ‘cruelty to animals’ or other concepts grounded in the recognition of an individual animal’s physical and psychological experiences, even when addressed within collectives), or aggregates of animals (where constitutions employ terms such as ‘species’, ‘wildlife’, ‘fauna’, etc.), or goes unspecified (e.g., in provisions containing non-specific language such as ’the protection of animals’). For constitutions in this group, it is quite common not to tie or subordinate animal protection to human interests, at least not explicitly, despite still maintaining an anthropocentric and objectifying approach. For instance, the Constitution of Slovenia states that ‘[t]he protection of animals from torture is regulated by law’,⁹² thereby extending constitutional protection to both individual animals and their aggregates (collectives) and providing a constitutional basis for the subsequent enactment of the Law on the Protection of Animals.⁹³

Another example from the third group is the Constitution of India, which, in the section on citizens’ fundamental duties, obliges them ’to have compassion for living creatures’⁹⁴ — a formulation that not only implicitly embraces both animals and humans, but can also be — and indeed has been — interpreted as applicable to individual animals.⁹⁵ One of the most elaborate constitutional provisions in this group is Article 80 of the Swiss Constitution.⁹⁶

There are currently several pending constitutional bills or proposed amendments to the constitution seeking to recognise and/or protect animal rights, for example, in Finland.⁹⁷

For a comparative experiment, we decided to look at the case law of the apex courts from the third group of countries. A remark that needs to be made is that such short comparative research does not meet the pure criteria of comparative methods, since in reality, the Russian constitutional system, even after the 2020 constitutional amendment, does not have a comparable level of protection of animals or biocenosis as other analysed countries; there have not been relevant constitutional cases from Russia either.

Another aspect that we have to be mindful of while comparing constitutional provisions on animal well-being is that in different regions of the world, relations with animals might significantly depend on the religious or cultural particularities of the society in question. It is not surprising, then, that the Indian Constitution has the provision of Article 52. However, what is instructive in this comparison is an attempt to develop the concept of responsible treatment of nature, with the corresponding obligation being both on the part of the state and on the part of citizens. Moreover, in these cases, we are particularly interested in the motivations and reasoning of animal advocates, which could, mutatis mutandis, serve as inspiration in similar cases, were such complaints to be admissible within the Russian legal system.

2.2. Case law #

Arguably, the most extensive in relation to the protection of biocenosis is the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of India. Although Indian courts often interpret nature and its components through the lens of statutory language that relies on broadly anthropocentric concepts — such as ’natural resource’, ‘gift of nature [presumably to humans]’, or ‘[human] environment’ — they nonetheless tend to articulate their rulings in a relatively neutral manner, largely free from overt anthropocentrism, even in the early stages of the relevant jurisprudence. As early as 1996, the latter adjudicated on a case involving a construction company as a respondent, which, by expanding a site for its recreation project, had threatened the ecosystem of the river Beas. The Court referred to the doctrine of public trust, which implied, inter alia, that the ’natural resources being a gift of nature, […] should be made freely available to everyone’ and that the ‘State as a trustee is under a legal duty to protect the natural resources’, obliging private companies making use of such resources to respect ecosystems and prevent harm to them. The doctrine was proclaimed to be legally binding.⁹⁸

The court even added a quotation from one of the materials before them to the reasoning part: ‘[t]here is a commonly-recognised link between laws and social values, but to ecologists a balance between laws and values is not alone sufficient to ensure a stable relationship between humans and their environment.’⁹⁹

These formulations may be contrasted, for example, with the reasoning in the U.S. case Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v Federal Power Commission,¹⁰⁰ where the language was markedly more blunt and explicitly anthropocentric. In that case, the court disagreed with the federal regulatory agency, which had denied the environmental group standing to bring the case, recognising instead the plaintiffs’ ‘special interest in the aesthetic, conservational, and recreational aspects’ of the mountain in question.

These cases may be seen as representing two different guises — one implicit and subdued, the other unapologetically explicit — in which anthropocentrism manifests in judicial decisions, reflecting a long-standing tendency (still prevalent in many jurisdictions) to assess the need for the protection of animals, natural objects such as rivers and mountains, and nature as a whole, exclusively through the lens of human interests, including its ‘availability’ for use and aesthetic enjoyment. Legal recognition and protection are thus granted not because of the intrinsic value of these beings or entities, but because of the subjective significance they hold for human observers or users.

The cases mentioned above are not directly related to the rights or protection of animals. Rather, they concern the protection of ecosystems or biodiversity. Similar cases have emerged in later years elsewhere, for example, in Ecuador,¹⁰¹ Colombia,¹⁰² and Brazil,¹⁰³ making Latin America a forefront of the movement, which at this point can hardly be named global.

Even though we have classified the Ecuadorian Constitution as the one oriented to the rights of nature instead of the well-being of animals,¹⁰⁴ the case lodged with the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court on behalf of, inter alia, two frog species is illustrative from a perspective of shifting the locus standi paradigm. The activists who appealed first to the provincial court were trying to stop mining activities in the habitat of two endangered frog species. They initially referred to the rights of nature, enshrined in the Ecuadorian Constitution (Arts. 71 and 73), interpreting it as that ’ecosystems must be respected in each of their elements, because each animal, each plant, each source of water depends on the other, and they live thanks to synergy, articulation and interdependence’.¹⁰⁵ From the latter, they derived the necessity to protect the species in question and act on their behalf. The case was a success for animal and nature rights activists.¹⁰⁶

Another group of more traditional animal protection cases comprises those that deal with individual situations of individual animals, such as the case of protection of a caged elephant in Pakistan,¹⁰⁷ or numerous cases of more ‘remarkable’ species, such as tigers and turtles. On the one hand, the very emergence of such cases signals the paradigm shift referenced above. On the other hand, most of these cases still reflect a ’traditional’ anthropocentric approach — granting protection based on human interests (including aesthetic appreciation) and needs, rather than in recognition of animals’ intrinsic value as sentient beings.¹⁰⁸ In some instances, courts have even refused to grant the requested protection — despite the plaintiffs’ submission of scientific evidence regarding animals’ consciousness and needs — because the animals lacked legal standing.¹⁰⁹

Another significant development occurred in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, where the province’s government of the Islands of Loyalty (îles Loyauté), having extensive environmental competence, decided that activists and rights of nature campaigners would be given locus standi in the cases involving the rights of the sea ecosystem, including sharks and turtles.¹¹⁰ The idea behind the decision was that animals (species) should have the same rights, including procedural rights in courts, as humans.¹¹¹

Even though it has never been adopted as a law or argued before a court, given the relevance of the region and the species in question, we cannot but mention an initiative from one of the members of parliament in Romania, who, as early as in 2014, proposed to recognise an ‘indigenous personhood’ of the Black Sea dolphins.¹¹² The bill has never passed through the Romanian parliament. A similar initiative failed at the Cantonal level in Basel, Switzerland, where the matter voted on in the referendum was whether primates should be guaranteed constitutional rights.¹¹³

The analysis presented in this section demonstrates that neither the rights of nature nor the rights of animals have yet gained broad constitutional recognition. Although case law in this area is gradually expanding — particularly in South American jurisdictions where constitutional protections of nature already exist — such examples remain relatively limited in scope. The idea of legal standing for animals, wildlife populations, species, or ecosystems is yet to be seen as rather unconventional at the very least. NGOs and activists do attempt to act on behalf of them, but often embark upon such endeavours in the absence of an established procedural status, as demonstrated by the above case from the French overseas territory or the failed 2014 Romanian bill.

This analysis also reveals a tendency of a growing interest in these issues among animal advocates, legal professionals, and even courts, although it has not yet translated into a common or at least widespread legislative change or into a sense of moral obligation that would lead individuals to align their behaviours with the values underlying these emerging concepts. Where shifts in public perception or behaviour have occurred, they are likely driven less by these legal or institutional trends and more by deeper, implicit cultural and moral shifts — subsurface influences that operate quietly but effectively, shaping attitudes, expectations, and reactions long before they take legislative form.

Consequently, this section suggests that while traditional ‘black-letter’ law and constitutional adjudication are not yet ready to embed such concepts, we can already witness the emergence and early manifestations of other, less formal yet equally significant undercurrents — shaping the reasoning behind decisions, influencing perceptions, and inspiring subsequent actions, which may soon prove instrumental in transforming both legal practice and societal norms. Our understanding of this shift is given in the concluding part of this paper.

3. Individuals and an alleged theoretical and judicial shift #

In the departure point of this manuscript, we have posed a question about the motivation and the reasons why individuals went to the Black Sea shore to volunteer for the sake of saving the wildlife there. In the above section, we have also shown that the individuals in question, similarly to their peers in other countries or regions in the world, could hardly find external legitimations or obligations to act in such a way. International law, obviously, obliges the states to act and cannot, with rare exceptions, oblige individuals to do anything. Domestic law in many jurisdictions, on the other hand, contains certain provisions applicable to citizens of respective countries, but such provisions are either declaratory or not properly entrenched, or, as the case of the Russian Federation demonstrates, were included in the constitutional text without proper assessment or elaboration, aiming at some populist goals.¹¹⁴

In this section, we want to try to find another legal motivation (if any) that is used or might have been used by the activists or volunteers to explain their urge to act. Since this article positions itself as legal research, we are interested in finding legal arguments behind their motivation, while we are staying aware that in the field we are discussing now, the separation of legal from moral is not an easy task. A possible and simple answer to this research question might be that there is no such legal remedy, and the activists are guided solely by moral or other non-legal obligations, but our hypothesis, based on the comparative material discussed above, is that there might also be a legal dimension of such obligations or responsibilities.

In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental law used to focus on the duties of institutional actors (such as states and corporations) rather than individual citizens and was sometimes criticised¹¹⁵ for not addressing the respective obligations of an individual. However, such disproportion was quite logical for environmental law in those decades of the explosive development of transnational business, which sparked active discussions of its impact at the local level, including the environmental consequences, and of the obligations of both states and corporations in this regard.

It was not until the 2010s,¹¹⁶ when environmental law turned to the idea of individuals’ duties towards the environment, paving the way for the emergence of such concepts as ’ecological citizenship’ and related notions¹¹⁷ and promoting the idea of deriving the grounds for individuals’ environmental obligations from existing legal frameworks despite the absence of binding legal duties. This broadening and shifting of the scope of a more traditional understanding of individual citizenship became likely possible thanks to the success in altering its subject to create the concept of ‘corporate citizenship’, and with similar aims.

These developments coincided with findings in the fields of behavioural law and moral psychology,¹¹⁸ which suggested that individuals’ actions often follow perceived norms and personal moral frameworks before, or even despite, formal legal imperatives. Likewise, empirical studies in environmental volunteerism¹¹⁹ depicted the participants’ tendency to cite moral duty, emotional attachment to place, or solidarity with affected communities as primary motivators, with reasoning that can be traced back to legal norms being secondary or even absent.

Hence, to date, several doctrines or doctrine-like conceptual frameworks have been identified, with the most relevant to this paper being the following:¹²⁰

Public trust doctrine — a well-established legal doctrine, seeing the state as a trustee of the people, protecting and managing natural resources in the public interest and securing public access to them.

Duty of care doctrine — both an ethical/philosophical and a legal doctrine, having two modalities: the negative one means a duty to refrain from causing foreseeable harm, while the positive one establishes an obligation to take preventive and proactive measures to minimise the risk of such harm and is applied mostly to specific situations (especially as a legal doctrine).¹²¹

Ecological citizenship — a doctrine-like framework or a political and ethical doctrine that considers environmental responsibility to be an integral part of civic responsibility and places it within the broader concept of citizenship, in this interpretation transcending geographical and intergenerational borders to secure a safer and just future.¹²²

Rights of Nature, or Legal personhood for natural entities — a relatively novel doctrine grounded in the biocentric perception of the world that aspires to move beyond traditional anthropocentrism in both law and philosophy by recognising non-human species and various ’elements of nature’ as rights-bearing subjects to attain some ultimate, possibly ideal equality.¹²³

Thus, relevant doctrines of both legal and interdisciplinary legal-philosophical nature do exist. There is also evidence¹²⁴ that environmental and animal rights advocates are guided by them, even when they are not lawyers and before a case reaches court.

It remains, however, unclear whether this situation is a result of a doctrine’s influence as such or some undercurrent processes of a more general nature. Moreover, it is unclear in what capacity individuals invoke these doctrines: as binding mandates, rhetorical devices, or legitimising narratives to align personal ethical convictions with recognised legal principles. Locating the clear boundary between legal and moral motivation in such cases may be quite challenging. And we cannot exclude an instrumental combination of capacities where law provides language and symbols, and ethics fuels the impulse to act. This suggests that understanding the behaviour in question requires a holistic approach that considers the interplay between legal doctrine, moral conviction, rhetorical strategy, and the broader socio-cultural processes shaping their engagement.

A prospective way of thinking and applying such a holistic approach, among others, might be the concept developed by Jennifer Nedelsky, writing in her well-acclaimed book, that the duty of care is an inherent duty of human beings.¹²⁵ This duty is derived from the application of the relations theory,¹²⁶ stating that all human beings are a part of the chain of myriad relations, including either other individuals and their groups or other communities, even beyond humans. She suggests that it is not enough to look at the legal relations from the perspectives of legal realism or, for instance, from the traditional Marxist approaches. In the end, what unites us, she claims, is that we are all a part of a complex organism including nature, other human beings, and we have both a moral and legal duty to care for each other.

In our analyses of the available data and sources, we did not find a specific articulation of the duty of care that would have guided the volunteers arriving to clean the Black Sea’s shore after the 15 December 2024 oil spill, but paradoxically, the Russian Government, by including in the amended 2020 Constitution words about social solidarity (Art. 75.1), ‘support of volunteer activities’ (Art. 114. e.2) and the functions of the Government, such as to ‘implement[…] measures aimed at […] reducing the negative impact of economic and other activities on the environment, preserving the country’s unique natural and biological diversity, and fostering a responsible attitude towards animals in society; […] create[…] conditions for the development of a system of environmental education for citizens and the cultivation of an environmental culture’ (Art. 114. e.5 and e.6) — have provided a constitutional framework for the people to feel such an alleged constitutional responsibility for their land, for the environment, and for the species, being an inalienable part of the latter, which might be a form of the duty of care in the Russian context.

It goes without saying that the whole complexity of social relations and reality is also blurred by the reference to pure rationality, ignoring relational and emotional parts of human life and behaviour. Applying Cartesian methodology, it would become irrational to claim that individuals have some obligations of a moral nature before the environment, originating from their experience.¹²⁷ But in the example of the volunteers’ activities in 2024-2025, and despite the restrictive and even negative approach of the authorities towards grassroots activism, thousands of people decided to act and to exercise their responsibility — their duty of care in view of the grave environmental disaster.

Conclusion #

This text is our first attempt to analyse, on the grounds of the Russian (Russia-related) and comparative legal material, whether there is indeed some sort of shift in relations between human beings and nature and animals. We have set an overambitious goal of proving that such a shift is happening and finding a motivation therefor. We decided to consider the specific example of Russian society’s reaction to the massive oil spill in the Black Sea, which caused unprecedented pollution of the shore and damage to the wild nature and non-human species.

To do that, we asked ourselves three questions about the status of ecosystems, wildlife, species, and individual animals under the current domestic and international law regimes. Secondly, we wondered whether these sources of law provide for any sort of individual obligations vis-à-vis nature and animals that would be somehow enforceable. And lastly, we wanted to find any legal evidence proving a possible shift in the understanding of individual obligations towards nature and animals within the people themselves, which we might call ‘a duty of care shift’.

After analysing international and selected domestic sources, we concluded that, even though the more recent legal sources can be described as more ‘pro-nature’ and open to looking at animals not solely as objects, this tendency is only emerging, and it still cannot be called mainstream. There is even less evidence in the legal sources to support the existence of any individual obligations, or rather responsibilities, towards nature and species. The law is obviously far behind the activist trends or philosophical developments that emphasise the connections between human beings and wildlife. Thus, approaching the third question, we discussed several sources on the side of legal philosophy, which allege, or rather advocate, for the shift of the paradigm in the understanding of the rights of nature or relations between human beings and other species. Being sympathetic to the latter writings, we cannot but admit the fact that en masse, they illustrate positions of individual authors, being doctrinal or normative, but not grounded in real empirical data.

Thus, for the time being, an honest answer to our third research question must be that ‘we do not know exactly,’ but we have a hypothesis that has not been disproved by our analyses of the black-letter law. The second conclusion therefrom would be that for further research, we would need to collect more empirical data, applying, perhaps, the sociology of law methods, organising interviews and, practicing what we preach, to go beyond a dogmatic approach to law.

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Обязанность заботиться о животных во время экологических бедствий: уроки разлива нефти в Керченском проливе #

Дмитрий Кузнецов, Владка Кои

Аннотация. Настоящая статья посвящена правовым и этическим понятиям duty of care (обязанность заботиться) в условиях экологической катастрофы на море на примере разлива мазута из танкеров серии «Волгонефть» в Керченском проливе 15 декабря 2024 года. В первые дни после катастрофы именно добровольцы взяли на себя задачу спасения животных и очистки побережья, действуя без координации и поддержки со стороны государства.

Авторы статьи задаются тремя основными вопросами: (1) охраняет ли национальное или международное право животных как таковых или же заботится об их сохранности исключительно исходя из их полезности как «ресурса» сугубо в человеческих интересах; (2) существуют ли какие-либо базовые правовые или этически обусловленные обязанности, которые могли бы сподвигнуть тысячи граждан на добровольную помощь пострадавшим животным и экосистемам; (3) происходит ли в настоящее время какой-либо сдвиг в отношениях между человеком, природой и животными, обозначающий отход от антропоцентризма в сторону гармонизации отношений человека с другими видами живых существ.

Проанализировав богатый нормативный материал, включая судебную практику, авторы приходят к выводу, что, несмотря на заметную экоцентричность современной правовой базы, её основной фокус сосредоточен на обязанностях публичных субъектов. Таким образом, тенденция восприятия животных как чувствующих субъектов пока не может быть названа господствующей ни на международном, ни на национальном уровне регулирования.

Авторы высказывают предположение, что действия волонтёров обусловлены преимущественно этическими мотивами, не связанными непосредственно с таким сдвигом. Вместе с тем массовость и спонтанность такого проявления эмпатии к пострадавшим живым существам можно рассматривать как свидетельство в пользу постепенной смены парадигмы. Отмечается, что для более детального ответа на вопрос о её смене необходимы дополнительные междисциплинарные и эмпирические исследования.

Статья демонстрирует экоправовой подход, ориентированный на защиту «животных вообще», что не всегда совпадает с благополучием конкретного животного. Авторы отмечают отсутствие в нормативных актах экологической направленности, распространяющихся на рассматриваемый пример, внимания к последствиям экологического загрязнения для индивидуально выделенных животных.

Ключевые слова: Керченский пролив, разлив нефти, duty of care, животные, международное право, добровольцы, экологическая катастрофа, антропоцентризм.

DOI: 10.55167/f6a7704ee2b0