Environmental security via sustainable development goals: Localization in the Arctic Region

Abstract

International audienceThe Arctic region has a scared population, but its urbanization rate is quite high, especially in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF). Considering environmental and human security, the Arctic region poses many challenges: pristine and vulnerable natural environment, the urban environment is often tainted with accumulated environmental damage, global climatic changes impose additional stress, and great uncertainty. The localization process means considering and implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at a local regional, city, or community level. Sustainable Development Goals offer a quite an interesting framework to consider environmental security issues, which is the focus of this presentation. Obtained research results to date consider an ecological block of indicators and three groups of parameters: impact on atmospheric air and water environment, as well as waste management, and ecosystem services. The socio-ecological block includes two main parameters: the comfort of living in Arctic cities (index of the quality of the urban environment; the share of the population in regions and cities with high and very high levels of pollution; provision of the population with clean drinking water) and the state of urban infrastructure (degradation of the infrastructure in areas such as water supply, sewerage, waste collection and disposal, pollution control activities, and the degree of housing improvement)