Sikhote-Alin: A Mountain Territory with Unique Potential for the Green Development

Abstract

Ideas about green economy and green development are closely linked to the sustainable development paradigm. In the 1970s, the Club of Rome for the first time formulated the main provisions of the model of sustainable development, which implies ensuring high environmental quality and maintaining sufficient natural resource potential for the long term. Various aspects of green and sustainable development acquire their meaningful expression only at the regional level. It is within a certain territory that least generalized assessments of natural resource potential and both the anthropogenic impact on nature components and their spatially differentiated consequences, assessment of the permissible change level and conservation of vegetation cover and biodiversity in general are possible. It is proposed to consider the green development at the regional level as one of the stages of the sustainable development. Sikhote-Alin is a unique mountain territory, where there are natural resource, economic, social and ecological-geographical conditions for forming and ensuring green economy and green development. At the same time, the green development of the Sikhote-Alin is considered as such a socio-economic development of the mountainous territory, where technogenic, anthropogenic impacts on the environment are minimized and high biodiversity of landscapes is preserved. Within the mountain system of Sikhote-Alin, in general, it is proposed to allocate three green development territories, Northern, Central and Southern, based on the similarity of natural resource structures and economic activities. These territories should have a special status to stimulate environmentally friendly economic activities, with the introduction of environmental restrictions and the achievement of rational nature management in general. The organization of monitoring of the green development territories is proposed.