From May 27 to May 31, an online course "Environmentally sustainable development of territories" will be held at MARSH.
The intensive includes presentations by experts, question and answer sessions, daily practical tasks for working out new knowledge in groups, expert support in the format of consultations. Each group will receive one of the cases: a federal city, a million-plus city, a regional capital, a small town, an administrative center, a rural settlement. It will be necessary to analyze the current situation, assess the main risks in terms of 17 sustainable development goals, propose a strategy for managing the development of the region, including adaptation to climate change and building resilience.
Course curator, UN observer and director of the Russian-German Bureau of Environmental Information Angelina Davydova tells why this topic is especially relevant for Russian projects.
“Environmentally sustainable development is an important indicator for measuring the quality of life. More and more people in various regions of the Russian Federation mention ecology as one of the main concerns.
The issues of environmentally sustainable development of territories continue to remain relevant even in the context of a pandemic and quarantine measures. In the face of worsening environmental and climate crises, it is the competent management of territories, including urbanized ones, that will reduce the burden on the environment, improve the quality of life, ensure green growth and allow cities to strengthen the resilience of their infrastructural, natural and social systems.
For Russian cities, the issue of environmentally sustainable development is especially relevant. First, many cities in the past 30 years have developed in the chaotic logic of post-Soviet growth, which is often socially meaningless and ecologically merciless. The question is how to turn regions with outdated infrastructure and growing “anthills” into “garden cities” of the 21st century, what can be done for this, what kind of planning is needed, how to take into account the opinions of environmental experts and various groups of the population. Secondly, the Russian regions are in a unique situation: many small towns and settlements are emptying, and megacities continue to expand. Sustainable development is becoming a key issue for such spatially unbalanced trends.
The demand for sustainable lifestyles continues to grow. During the online course, we will try to understand how to help this trend to form in difficult macroeconomic conditions and how to put the economy of territorial development on a “green track”.
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