The visions of the natural world built by man also shape our relationship with respect to the environment. In the present paper I would like to demonstrate how these holistic ideas, like the Gaia Hypothesis, affect ethical relations with nature. Do they enhance the need to treat nature in accordance with ethics, are they ethically neutral, or do they convince us that man has no ethical obligations to the environment whatsoever? “The Gaia Hypothesis” can be ambivalent in this respect, but in the end it leaves no doubt that, even though other species do what man does, Gaia (biosphere) has a limited tolerance for negative effects of human activity. And although we are not able to annihilate the life on the Earth, we are certainly capable of destroying the conditions necessary for our subsistence.

The diversity of economic-financial instruments for environmental protection requires that they be systematized according to certain common criteria, whether they belong to the fiscal, commercial or customs field, or whether they are applied by various categories of subjects or are provided for in the content of one and the same legislative act . The present article comes with a distinct systematization, gives a consecutiveness that also ensures an efficiency in interpretation, understanding and application by the responsible environmental authorities, but also by those that carry out the control of economic activity.