Sustainable Development in Russia’s Northern Regions: Labor Dimension

Abstract

The article points out that sustainable development is not the ultimate goal, but a dynamic process of adaptation, cognition and activity. We show that the transition to sustainable development is preconditioned by historical circumstances; we reveal the chronology of the concepts of sustainable development from the Brundtland Report to the 2030 Agenda. We analyze six international systems of sustainable development indicators; each of the systems contains social-labor indicators and indicators of living standards. We emphasize that the common disadvantage of all the systems is that their indicators are poorly adapted to Russian statistics. We consider it important to establish a set of labor indicators and develop a methodology to assess sustainable development. The novelty of our research lies in fact that we use our own approach to the assessment of sustainable development with the use of labor indicators. Labor stability is estimated according to four factors that include twelve labor indicators. On the basis of an expert survey, we determine the impact of each labor factor and indicator on sustainable development. We calculate the integral index of labor stability, and use it to rank all the northern regions according to the degree of stability: critical, low, medium, high. The results obtained allow us to conclude that labor stability in the northern regions increased significantly from 2000 to 2015; there is no region with a critical degree of labor stability, it is low only in Tuva, and five regions have a high degree of stability. At the first stage of the research, we propose a method for assessing demographic stability using two approaches: ranking regions on the basis of demographic indicators and on the basis of an integral index. It is planned to develop a methodology for forecasting sustainable development based on demographic and labor indicators. The main provisions and conclusions of the paper can be used as a theoretical and methodological basis for determining sustainable development at different levels of administration

Keywords

• sustainable development
• northern regions
• labor indicators
• labor stability