Arctic: sustainable development of the region and ensuring national security

Abstract

Competition for access to resources in the modern world is often decisive in shaping the state policy of many countries. The clash of geopolitical and economic interests of various states, including those in the Arctic, leads to an aggravation of conflicts between them. The Arctic region, due to its unique natural resource, geopolitical and human potential, is certainly a zone of strategic interests of our country. To date, the most relevant are the problems of ensuring the state security of the Russian Federation in the Arctic, as well as ensuring sustainable socio-economic development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, while maintaining a favorable state of the environment and its unique nature. An important role in this process is played by the formation of a comprehensive and balanced system of legal regulation both at the national and international and interstate levels. One of the urgent problems in ensuring the national security of Russia in the Arctic region is the completion of the process of establishing, in accordance with the norms of International Law, the limits of the extension of its sovereign rights to the spaces of the Arctic Ocean and its natural resources. The international legal consolidation of the borders of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation is the basis for the implementation of the sovereign rights of our state on the Arctic shelf as one of the components of ensuring national security in the region. In the sustainable development of the Russian Arctic, one of the key tasks is the organization of sea cargo transportation along the Northern Sea Route under the control of the Russian Federation, as well as ensuring the competitiveness of this national transport artery in the world market. The issues of environmental protection and the unique Arctic nature that need to be addressed on a priority basis also seem to be a priority. Appropriate measures should be developed on the basis of advanced scientific achievements and implemented by all subjects of economic and other activities in the region.