Development of the legal culture of citizens in the field of environmental protection using digital governance tools

The article analyzes some problems of forming a legal framework for the use of digital tools of information and communication interaction between state environmental protection bodies and citizens in the context of finding opportunities to increase public influence on public management in the field of environmental protection in Ukraine. It has been proven that the introduction of modern digital tools in the field of environmental protection contributes to increasing the involvement of citizens in the processes of public environmental protection control, as well as increasing the level of legal culture due to the active position of the citizen, the ability to establish interaction with state environmental protection bodies, and facilitating the prosecution of violators of environmental protection legislation. It is substantiated that the formation of a high level of legal culture in the field of environmental protection in Ukraine is important for many reasons, in particular: it is the formation of values, norms and beliefs regarding a careful attitude to the surrounding natural environment; this is the ability to interact with the legal system within the framework of the implementation of the constitutional right of a person and a citizen to an environment safe for life and health; it is the activation and unification of the potential of society and the state to find ways to solve environmental problems through public influence on management decision-making at the level of control bodies and local self-government bodies. The authors provide specific examples of the use of digital tools developed by the public sector, as well as approaches to improving the legal support for the further development of digitalization processes in the field of environmental protection, namely: two different approaches, namely: to the current legal framework, with the aim of improving the legal basis for ensuring the functioning of digital mechanisms in accordance with the current legislation; a systematic approach, the content of which consists in adapting the software algorithms of the functioning of the digital mechanism to the current legal framework, with the possibility of rapid updating of the corresponding software in case of changes to the current legal acts.