He called the clogging of the near-Earth orbit a new direction of environmental work that has arisen before humanity
MOSCOW, December 7. /tass/. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on Tuesday discussed the problems of environmental legislation with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who joined the discussion with the ISS. The video broadcast of the seminar was held on the official YouTube channel of the Sun.
"Judicial authorities in Russia are implementing systematic measures to protect the environment, more than a thousand regulatory legal acts have been adopted. The Plenum of the Supreme Court adopted more than 50 resolutions on the practice of applying these norms," Vyacheslav Lebedev, Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, opened the seminar.
Shkaplerov, who has a law degree, noted the outstanding importance of environmental issues in the development of mankind, emphasizing the special view of this problem that is formed when viewed from space. "The Supreme Court of Russia is the only judicial body in the world that conducts communication sessions with space crews. The pennant of the Supreme Court of Russia was in space for 122 days, circling the Earth 16 times a day... Environmental protection is of particular interest to me. Scientific experiments allow you to track the melting of glaciers, forest fires, and so on. The Earth sensing system will soon appear in the Nauka module," Shkaplerov said.
Answering questions from representatives of the judicial community of Russia, Shkaplerov reported on special attention to the problems of the earth's flora, which provides the planet with oxygen, and the state of the world ocean, which occupies most of the planet. "Therefore, in my opinion, it is necessary to pay increased attention to the application of the Forest Code of the Russian Federation, to improve the institutions of criminal and administrative responsibility for illegal logging of green spaces," Shkaplerov said.
Shkaplerov called the clogging of the near-Earth orbit a new direction of environmental work that has arisen before humanity. "The mass of debris in orbit already exceeds 10 thousand tons. This is a dangerous factor for spacecraft… Therefore, the Federal Space Program of Russia includes the creation of a "cleaner" of garbage from geostationary orbits in the coming years," the cosmonaut said.
At the end of the connection, Shkaplerov received congratulations on the upcoming New Year and expressed his wish to continue discussing environmental issues after returning to Earth.