Legal safeguards for nature conservation and environmental preservation

The current situation with the surrounding natural environment has reached a critical point, making nature conservation questions highly relevant today. The research aims to examine the key legislative provisions regarding the protection of nature and the environment. The study utilizes methods of analysis, synthesis, scientific generalization, and formal-structural methods. The publication addresses the correlation between ecological and nature-resource law. It is stated that legal protection of nature and the environment in Ukraine operates on three levels: constitutional, legislative, and at the level of sub-legal normative legal acts. The content of the Law of Ukraine, "On the Protection of the Environment," has been analyzed. This approach allowed for the classification of the provisions of the law into two major groups: functionally competent and those intended to ensure the general mechanism of environmental protection implementation. The appropriateness of using the term "environment" rather than "natural environment" at the level of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is considered. After reviewing the content of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the authors conclude that most criminal offenses in this Chapter are characterized by the material composition of a crime. Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine was chosen as an example of analysis. The article discusses the elements of the criminal offense prescribed by Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the sanctions provided by the legislator for this type of criminal offense. Recommendations were developed to allow courts to impose penalties for violations more substantively under Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The authors described the qualified composition of the criminal offense prescribed by Part 2 of Article 245 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The paper investigates the place of ecocide in the system of criminal offenses against peace, the security of humanity, and international law. It examines the name of the special section of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses, noting its somewhat unconventional nature.