Environmental Safety of Urbanized Territories as a Developing Institution for Ensuring the Vital Interests of Mankind

The article deals with the current theoretical and scientific - practical problems of legal regulation of protecting nature and the mechanism for ensuring environmental safety as an integral part of environmental protection, in particular, concerning urbanized areas. Topical issues of environmental safety as a new direction of legal regulation are raised in the context of sustainable development and public health. The assessment of the achievement of sustainable urban development and ensuring the environmental safety of urbanized areas has been carried out at the international law level and with the help of national legislation. The work analyzes international methods of assessing the quality of the environment and the damage caused. The article also provides a brief overview of the mechanisms of environmental legislation in Russia. The authors consider that it is necessary to develop ecological safety indicators to ensure interest in the implementation of environmental protection measures. An increase or decrease in the monetized assessment of environmental losses within a selected period should ultimately serve as an indicator of the effectiveness of the environmental policy and be the basis for determining the degree of environmental safety in a particular area. As a result, the importance of legal regulation of the environmental safety’s concept in its relationship with the concept of “favorable environment” and the term “environmental protection” is emphasized. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.