Transforming the agricultural sector for better sustainable development: perspectives from Russia as a member state of the Eurasian Economic Union

Abstract

The agricultural sector is a core stone to many sustainable development goals and initiatives, including the largest one – the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to achieve many of these goals, it is highly necessary to have effective policies aimed at the sustainable development of the agricultural sector, since it is very much connected to all other sectors of the economy and society and is central to achieving many SDGs. However, to formulate and achieve such diverse and multiple goals, one should be able to control the development of key indicators, track outcomes of the measures being taken, and review the whole array of methods being used in order to allow for guided course corrections. Despite SDGs present a global sustainable development perspective, it is necessary to use them with local and regional indicators that capture well the degree of sustainability in the agricultural sector of a particular country or region. The paper focuses on Russia and the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as an local/regional example. A list of local/regional indicators is proposed in connection to the corresponding global SDGs.