The paper considers the problems of legal regulation and environmental policy in Russia and Kazakhstan related to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The focus of this study is in the plane of studying the features of legislative regulation and the arrangement of political priorities in the two countries in order to determine their similarities and differences. The study intends to assess the current state of the legislative regulation of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan in the context of achieving individual SDGs. Taking into account the object of this study, the assessment of the readiness of countries to achieve the SDGs is carried out within the framework of such criteria as: (1) the current state of the relevant legislation in the field of environmental protection and natural resource management and the analysis of legislative regulation in terms of adaptability to achieve the SDGs, and (2) the role of programmatic-strategic documents in areas corresponding to the SDGs, covering environmental protection and natural resource management. A study of the experience of the Russian Federation gives grounds to say that the fragmented and inconsistent approaches enshrined in policy documents and Russian regulatory legal acts regulating nature management cause duplication of certain provisions of regulatory legal acts. Both Russian and Kazakhstani legislators avoid the universal application of the concept of “sustainable development goals” as a separate category in lawmaking, reserving the right to interpret this term at their own discretion. Formally, in the legislation and strategic and program documents of both countries there is no normative binding justifying the focus on achieving the SDGs, or tools for achieving them. However, on the part of Kazakhstan, strategic documents and national laws and regulations governing sustainable resource management are less diversified and more consistent with each other. The study gives grounds to say that in view of the presence in the Russian legal field of many inconsistent laws and political documents, harmonization of strategic documents related to the achievement of the SDGs is an urgent issue for the Russian Federation. For RK, this problem is less obvious. At the regulatory level, the instruments for achieving the UN SDGs and their indicators are not enshrined in the laws of both countries. References to the defining role of the UN SDGs are absent both in the text of the strategic documents of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The relevance of the research is due to the fact that at present, both in Kazakhstan and around the world, there are changes and reforms in the social, economic and political spheres, which contributes to the growth of living standards of the population, generates demand and supply for products of a market economy. In this regard, the mechanisms for the protection of property rights require increased attention from the institutions of state power, the effectiveness and improvement of current legislation. The purpose of the study is to identify potential gaps, develop evidence-based proposals for improving legislation based on international standards and international experience. The main research methods of the studied problem were historical, comparative legal, statistical, empirical, analysis and comparison, which allowed to study the problem in more detail by identifying historical patterns, real state of affairs and identify the best solutions that can be implemented in the legislation of Kazakhstan. The presented research was carried out taking into account the land policy pursued by the authorized state bodies of Kazakhstan, public associations and interested parties, which resulted in the provision of reasonable proposals for amendments to the legislation regarding the prevention and prevention of unauthorized seizure of land and its illegal sale. The theoretical significance of the research is aimed at the scientific understanding of such a negative phenomenon as the unauthorized seizure of the earth. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the proposed provisions are aimed at improving the national legislation that contributes to minimizing and counteracting offenses in this area.