A Socioeconomic Development Concept for Russia’s Specially Protected Areas to Address the Negative Anthropogenic Impact: Evidence from the Tunkinsky National Park

Abstract

Russia’s natural parks (NP) are critical for the preservation and recovery of the natural environment and biodiversity. NPs were mainly created to preserve the landscape- forming biotopes. Siberian and Far Eastern NPs were founded in the late 1980s or early 1990s. As a result, previously human-populated or otherwise affected areas that contained settlements, logging sites, mining sites, collective farms, and other economic facilities were transformed into national parks. A national park is supposed to provide venue for research and recreation, which is at odds with the locals’ economic activities. Irrational recreational use of NP areas degrades the plant communities: vulnerable species vanish, less vulnerable replace them, and meadow species become widespread in forest ecosystems; it also negatively affects the soil cover as it destroys the ground litter of soils, makes the humus horizon shallow and too dense, ultimately killing the soil microflora. This is the case of nearly any NP in Siberia and the Far East, which calls for well-thought-out economic zoning of areas that would be environmentally, economically, and legally sound. It is on this basis that this paper proposes a socioeconomic development concept (the Concept) for the Tunkinsky NP.