Threats of natural character, factors affecting sustainable development of territories and their prevention

Abstract

XXI century is characterized by globalization of socio-economic processes, economic growth, and excessive consumption of natural resources that leads to imbalance in socio-economic systems. Significant threats to the sustainable development of territories are natural and anthropogenic disasters, the extent and severity of which significantly increased in recent decades. They do great damage to economy and environment, often accompanied by loss of human lives. Russia with its broad territory, significant difference in climate conditions, is exposed to the wide range of natural hazards and disasters. The most dangerous are earthquakes, floods, forest fires. About 20 % of the Russian Federation is situated in zones of high risk, which are inhabited by more than 20 million people. Area of flooding as a result of floods can reach over 400 km2. Annually in the forests appear from 100 to 300 thousand of fires on the total area of 1.5 - 2.5 million hectares. The impact of natural disasters on the sustainable development of territory is considered in the article as an example of one of the Russian regions - the Republic of Mordovia. It was analyzed the dynamics of emergencies for the period of 2000 - 2012 years, paid attention to natural emergencies (forest fires and floods). Despite the fact that occurrence of emergency and catastrophic situations of natural character happens spontaneously, size of damage they do largely determined by timeliness and accuracy of the prediction and adoption of adequate preventive measures. In this regard, the article provides recommendations to reduce threats of natural character for the sustainable development of the Republic of Mordovia. They cover a range of activities on monitoring of natural phenomena, protection of the population from emergency situations to minimize potential damage, training of population in the face of natural disasters, development of economic policy in the region and training of personnel in the sphere of environmental management.