Ecological Footprint and Decoupling in the Sustainable Development of a Region

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Abstract
The purpose of the study is to examine the issues of assessing the anthropogenic impact on the ecosystem and sustainable development of a region using the example of Kuzbass. The subject of the study is to substantiate the need to improve the measurements of sustainable development of the regional economy from the point of view of calculating the “ecological and carbon footprints” of Kuzbass, identifying the effect of decoupling the negative impact on the environment and resource consumption in the process of economic activity of coal mining enterprises. The following tasks are solved: 1. The role of the environmental factor in ensuring sustainability of the resource-producing region development is shown. 2. The possibilities of using the “ecological footprint” and the “carbon footprint” as indicators of sustainable development of Kuzbass are discovered. 3. The role of mining enterprises in the formation of the “carbon footprint” in Kuzbass was revealed. 4. The calculation was carried out and the effect of decoupling in the coal mining of Kuzbass in 2013-2017 was revealed. 5. The necessity of including the indicators of “ecological footprint”, “carbon footprint” and the effect of decoupling in the coal mining in the system for assessing sustainable development of the mining region in accordance with the UN sustainable development goals (hereinafter - the UN SDGs) is justified. 5. It is argued that it is necessary to expand voluntary greening of enterprises in the coal mining of Kuzbass. Research methods are elements of system and integrated approaches, comparative analysis methods.