SYSTEMATIC APPROACH FOR ENSURING THE RESILIENCE OF ECOLOGICAL-ECONOMIC SYSTEMS OF THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC (PART 2. ASSESSMENT PROCEDURE AND CRITERIA)

Abstract

Background. The study is aimed at design and development of methods and approaches to ensuring, assessment and regulation of the ecological robustness of Arctic regions in order to resilience and management efficiency enhancement of the ecological-economic systems performance of the Arctic. To date, this problem is of particular importance under conditions of intensive industrial development of the resource base of Arctic territories, which reduces the stability of Arctic ecosystems and negatively affects the health and life quality of the population. Materials and methods. The research work consists of two parts. In the first part the proposed principles of resilience management and criteria for ensuring the environmental safety of the Arctic region, based on the postulates of the theory of sustainable development and the concept of acceptable risk, are considered. In the second part the environmental safety metrics and systematic approach to assessing the level of ecological robustness of the Arctic ecosystems, based on expert methods for resilience analysis of organizational and technical systems, are discussed. Results and conclusions. The fundamental principles and a set of criteria for ensuring environmental safety for various types of economical activity in the Arctic region have been developed. A general systematic approach to the ecological robustness analysis of the Arctic region according to selected principles and criteria, based on the joint application of a hierarchical multi-level decomposition scheme "principle – criterion – indicator – index" and models for quantitative and qualitative assessment of the complex system resilience, is proposed. The use of developments provides the formation and advance of the legal regulatory framework (national public standard) for governing various types of economical activity in the Arctic region, as well as improving the quality of managerial decisions made by state, regional and enterprise authorities in the field of environmental safety and environmentally friendly, responsible nature management.

Keywords

• ecological-economic system
• resilience management
• safety principles and criteria
• estimation procedure
• environmental quality control
• sustainable development
• acceptable risk concept
• arctic region