Nature management conflicts in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation: methodology of identification and mapping

The paper deals with methodology for identification and mapping of nature management conflicts in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF). A nature management conflict means crises in social-natural system; and their manifestations in the Arctic zone are various. An important cause of conflicts is inefficient economic development. Nature management conflicts result from certain combinations of environmental and anthropogenic factors and are spatially different. Nevertheless they have common features. They relate to excessive exploitation of natural capital formed by territorial pools of ecosystem services. Such pools may be revealed using landscape ecology methods. The change in the spectrum of the most demanded ecosystem services is determined by the programs and the level of economic development, as well as the ideological reasons, both ethno-cultural and ethical (i. e. the ethics of consumption in a post-industrial society). The most demanded ecosystem services in nature management of the advanced development zones in the AZRF were identified. Identification of nature management conflicts is based on monitoring data, thematic maps of different scales and also a retrospective analysis of geosystems degradation indicators associated with the development of such conflicts based on historical documents. The conflicts of nature management are more often linked to the pattern of the exploitation of ecosystem services, known as “The Tragedy of the Commons”, when their use is controlled by utilitarian interests of a stakeholder. This does not meet the sustainable development goals adopted by the AZRF development strategy. A general model and a standard matrix for identifying conflicts of nature management are proposed. These enable to identify competition for the exploitation of ecosystem services pools formed by a territorial landscape structure. An algorithm for determining the dynamics of ecosystem services pools is defined. Ranking of the territory was carried out based on the analysis of spatial combinations of the most important socio-economic, ecological and environmental factors that complicate or facilitate the economic development. A special algorithm was elaborated for this. A classification of conflicts has been developed for mapping purposes, as well as methods of their presentation on maps. The results of the methodology implementation including the ecological-economic assessment are presented for the Nenets, North Yakut, and Murmansk advanced development zones of the AZRF.

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