Environmental Safety of the Region: New Approach to Assessment

Abstract

The ecology becomes a limiting factor for the sustainable development of the country in general, as well as its certain regions. The issue of assessment of the level of ecological safety of territories arises.The article considers the assessment technique of the composite index of Environmental Safety by aggregation of three indicators reflecting social and economic development, ecological conditions and human capacity of the region. The aggregation is offered to be carried out by means of the method of multivariate average. Official data of the Federal State Statistics Service is used for the calculation of indicators. Original aggregate is divided into two or three groups by each indicator and composite index of environmental safety of the region. It makes it possible to define a place of the region in space of indicators, to identify type of the studied territory by the level of environmental safety and to develop effective strategies of ecological safety management both for a separate territorial unit and for homogeneous groups.The suggested methodology makes it possible to obtain rather adequate estimates for main territorial levels of management – municipal, subjective, district.