Business and Government: Environmental and Economic Responsibility in the Russian Arctic

Abstract

The growing interest in environmental problems on the part of society leads to the fact that more and more attention is paid to the activities of enterprises, and the criteria for the greening of their production are becoming more stringent. With the growth of industrial production, the scale of the negative impact on the environment increases, so simply discussing environmental problems becomes insufficient. There is a need for a comprehensive accounting of the environmental performance of organizations and the development of measures to compensate for the resulting environmental damage. The article examines the issues of environmental and economic relations between business and government in the Russian Arctic. The purpose of this study is to form a theoretical approach to solving the problem of greening the Arctic regions based on the analysis of the ecological and economic relations between government and business. Legal and economic instruments for regulating environmental protection in Russia, as well as strategic documents for the development of the Russian Arctic in the field of ecology are analyzed. An assessment of the environmental and economic responsibility of companies operating in the Russian Arctic is carried out on the basis of non-financial reporting data. The results of the analysis show that the presented non-financial information is not transparent enough, and the level of business responsibility is rather low. To solve the problem posed, the authors propose a theoretical approach to building a "green" partnership, which allows finding a compromise between the interests of the state and business. The formation of an integrated ecological and economic approach in the state regulation of environmental protection activities will allow reaching a point of bifurcation in the relationship between government and business and thereby leveling the anthropogenic load on the ecosystem of the territory.

Keywords

• ecology
• state
• business
• non-financial reporting
• “green” partnership