Environmental-Economic Management of Urbanized Areas from Air Protection Perspective

Challenges arising from the continuous population growth, expansion of urbanized areas, the aggravating environmental performance, the shrinking deposits of fossil energy sources and inability to fully replace them by renewable ones, the growing air emissions of hazardous substances of anthropogenic origin have acquired a global dimension, which raises the importance of studies focused on various issues of environmental-economic management of urbanized areas. The article’s objective is to substantiate the need for implementation of environmental-economic management in urbanized areas in order to prevent the impact of emissions of hazardous substances on the condition of ambient air.       The need to change the anthropocentric paradigm dominating economic management for a long time for the ecocentric paradigm is emphasized. The environmental policy goals pertaining to the protection of ambient air in the countries covered by the resolutions of the World Health Organization (WHO), and the environmental policy principles in EU countries laid as the basis of air quality targets and standards are outlined and discussed. An extensive review covers the main sources of air pollution and measures to reduce emissions of hazardous substances contained in WHO recommendations on air quality and other normative documents, with special emphasis on the data provided by the European Environment Agency. A nomenclature of management decisions on air quality, elaborated on ecocentric foundations, is given.