Under current conditions, considering the national development goals of Russia through to 2030, one of the urgent tasks is to provide the development of country’s regions on the principles of ecological and economic balance, which is especially important for the Russian northern territories because of their greater vulnerability and lower rate of ecosystem restoration. In this regard, the purpose of the work is to study the features and problems of ecological and economic balance in the development of the northern region, as well as to justify the tools to solve them. The object of the study is the Russian North as a region which has enormous natural resource and geostrategic potential, and occupies an important place in the territory of the North. The basis of the methodology is the of P. Victor model, which makes it possible to assess the presence or absence of the decoupling effect in the regional development. Subsequently, we analyze the trends for compliance with the principles of ecological and economic balance. As a result, we have found that there is no decoupling effect for all types of anthropogenic impacts in 2007–2018. Moreover, the considered trends do not meet the key principles of ecological and economic balance including the reason of the low implementation rate of environmental innovations in economic activity due to their high cost. This necessitates the need to form a mechanism of ecological and economic balance of development; it’s most important element could be a regional fund to support the implementation of the best available technologies. The fund plays the role of a financial tool to stimulate the introduction of innovations in the enterprises that are greening their activities. The scientific novelty of the work is to improve the methodological tools for assessing and providing the ecological and economic balance of the regional development. The direction for further research will be a more detailed elaboration of the mechanism to provide ecological and economic balance in the development of the northern regions in the country
Keywords
sustainable development, decoupling, best available technologies, ecological and economic balance, Russia North, natural recourse intensity