A joint research team, including scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, has assessed the adaptation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ) — aims in the field of ecology, economics and social well-being set by the UN — across Russian and Kazakhstani regions. It turned out that the average level of achieving these goals in regions is increasing by approximately 1.18% annually. At the same time Kazakhstan demonstrates a somewhat higher rate of increase, but also bigger difference in development between its territories. The obtained data will help to estimate more precisely the effectiveness of measures taken by different regions to improve life quality of their residents, and also develop new economic strategies. Results of the research are published in the journal Sustainability.
In September 2015 193 UN member states, including Russia, agreed to achieve 17 key goals in the sphere of sustainable development. They are aimed at provision of quality education and healthcare, elimination of poverty and inequality, addressing climate change and preservation of natural ecosystems. At the same time the success of such tasks largely depends on the conditions in different regions of the country, because they differ a lot in large cities and rural areas.
Economists try to adapt SDGs for each individual region taking into account its specificity. For example, for coastal regions one of the key goals will be preservation of sea ecosystems, for industrial areas — modernization of plants and keeping air purity. Thus, regions must work out their own strategies, choose indicators relevant for their territory and shape policy in such a way that it agrees with global standards, but solves local issues. However it is not completely understood how well individual regions of our country and also neighbouring states are coping with adaptation of SDGs.
A joint research team — including scientists from IKBFU — has conducted the first‑ever comparative analysis of SDG achievement across 89 Russian and 17 Kazakhstani regions for 2015–2024. A joint research team — including scientists from IKBFU (Kaliningrad) and their colleagues — has conducted the first‑ever comparative analysis of SDG achievement across 89 Russian and 17 Kazakhstani regions for 2015–2024. To achieve this, the authors analysed regional performance using 47 indicators that cover 14 SDGs. Three more SDGs were not taken into account because they cannot be adapted to the regional scale, and can be assessed only for the whole country. For example, goal №14 — "Conservation of sea ecosystems” — is relevant only for coastal areas, whereas for most regions of Russia and Kazakhstan that don’t have access to the sea, it doesn’t make any sense to track its implementation.
Using obtained assessments scientists calculated the index of adaptation to SDGs for each region. On the basis of this index they divided all territories under study into four groups. The first one — “leading regions” — included cities with populations over one million and their suburbs, and also regions where oil, gas and other minerals are extracted. It was they who demonstrated the highest economic and social indicators. This group includes 16 regions of Russia and 2 regions of Kazakhstan.
The second and largest group — “regions of balanced development” (34 regions of Russia and 7 of Kazakhstan) — consisted of territories that received scores above the average (more than 55 points from 100) for the most SDGs. The third one — “depressive regions” (24 regions of Russia and 4 regions of Kazakhstan) — showed moderate social-economic indicators but a relatively good environmental situation. Regions in the last, fourth group — “regions with critical indicators" (11 regions of Russia and 4 of Kazakhstan) — demonstrated the lowest population incomes, but at the same time the least internal inequality, which was explained by practically identical conditions for all their residents.
Analysis shows that the calculated index was mostly influenced by the level of economic development of the region: on the territories where GDP (gross domestic product) per capita was high, the index also was better. Besides this, the index greatly depended on the level of residents' wages and amount of government investment in the region.
On average, the calculated index annually grew by approximately 1.18% in the studied regions. At the same time, in Kazakhstan this increase was faster than in Russia, but less uniform. As a result, a gap in indicators between Russian territories turned out to be less significant than that between territories in Kazakhstan.
| Lyudmila Semenova, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Director of the IKBFU Institute of Hospitality: |
| Interestingly enough, we have found out another factor that contributes to improvement of SDG indicators — successful neighboring regions. Thus, if you take one particular region, its index of adaptation to SDGs will grow faster if it also increases in neighboring regions. This shows that regions are not isolated, but learn from each other. Therefore it makes sense not only to give money to lagging regions, but to help them to adopt successful practices from leading regions. In the future we are planning to expand our research, and also to analyze the influence of human resource potential, educational technologies and resources on the development of the territories. |
The investigation involved staff from Воронежского государственного Voronezh State University of Forestry and Technologies Named after G.F. Morozov, Almaty Management University (Kazakhstan), and Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (Moscow).
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