Article by Georgy Fomenko "Environmental Management: Evolution of Institutional Change, Part 1" was published in the journal "Problems of Regional Ecology" No. 4/2019
The article is devoted to the problem of increasing the effectiveness of environmental protection measures through the orientation of environmental institutions towards sustainable development, taking into account socio-cultural features of territories. The article considers problems of importing environmental institutions in various historical and geographical conditions. Analysis of the evolution of formal and informal environmental institutions, using the author’s behavioral model of a “homo responsibilis”, made it possible to identify a sociocultural corridor of institutional changes in environmental management and the most significant directions for its expansion.
The analysis of the evolution of environmental institutions showed an increase in the scale of environmental regulation over the centuries, and development of environmental institutions integrated into territorial institutional systems becoming more complex. An analysis of institutional changes in environmental management by the example of Russia showed that, starting with the Mesolithic and with the globalization of environmental problems and the complexity of human civilization, there has been an expansion in the scale and variety of use of natural resources and ecosystem services, as well as an increase in environmental risks and threats of global environmental disasters.
The article notes that the implementation of the global sustainable development goals in Russia involves the development and application of new environmental institutions and relevant indicators of their effectiveness at all levels of the spatial organization. The import of environmental institutions from other countries, their own history or theory in the short term will be limited by the socio-cultural institutional corridor. For environmental activities, such institutional constraints explain the modern dominance of control and administrative methods of public administration (administrative ban on the development of dirty industries, budget programs for the elimination of environmental damage, etc.).
The institutional situation in Russia from the standpoint of the SDG implementation creates the need for a target-oriented systemic “subtle” expansion of the institutional corridor for future changes. In this context, the article shows the importance of developing mechanisms of strategic spatial planning and design on a sustainable basis and using full economic value, a public-private partnership tool to increase the interest of business and local communities in the implementation of the SDGs with minimal economic and social costs. This is not feasible without relevant information and analytical support involving the development and use of indicators of environmental-economic accounting.