ISSN 10193316, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2009, Vol. 79, No. 6, pp. 574–579. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2009. Original Russian Text © N.Ya. Shaparev, 2009, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2009, Vol. 79, No. 12, pp. 1093–1099.
Point of View The shortcomings of Krasnoyarsk krai’s specific taxation system for the use of natural resources are consid ered, and a solution to this problem is suggested. DOI: 10.1134/S1019331609060094
Regional Sustainable Nature Management N. Ya. Shaparev* The territory of Krasnoyarsk krai has the shape of a meridianoriented strip of 3000 km long, 1250 km wide in the north and 650 km wide in the south. The krai’s land resources are 234 million hectares (13.7% of Russia’s territory). They are categorized as follows: forestry fund lands, 65.77%; farmlands, 16.82%, including arable land, 1.3%; reserve lands, 12.89%; specially protected territories, 4.06%; water fund lands, 0.25%; lands under settlement, 0.13%; and industrial lands, 0.08%. The krai’s population is 2.95 million (2% of Russia’s population). Its density is 1.3 persons per 1 km2. The river runoff in Krasnoyarsk krai is about 630 km2/yr. This is 14% of Russia’s runoff. The Yenisei is one of Russia’s longest rivers and occupies the fifth position in annual runoff. The underground water resources are evaluated at 10 km3, accounting for 3% of Russia’s total. Hydrological information on the territory is poor. Although the region’s water con sumption is evaluated at 2% of the runoff, Krasnoyarsk krai holds the leading position in the Siberian Federal District in water consumption. The area of the krai’s forestry fund lands is 163.7 million hectares (21.5% of Russia’s forest area), of which firstcategory forests occupy 34.3%; those of the second category, 1.7%; and the third category accounts for 64%. The total area of forested land is 108.8 million hectares. Wood reserves account for 11.9 billion m3 (14.5% of Russia’s total). Note that only 10–12% out of the nominally huge forest stock is commercially valuable for the market. Other forests fulfill biospheric functions or are used for fuel. The volume of lumber is over 10 million m3 a year. Krasno yarsk krai holds the seventh position in Russia in tim ber export and the third place in sawn timber produc tion. Biological and forest nonwood resources include 375 bird species (a few dozen of them have gaming value); 69 million hectares of hunting grounds (the most valuable are fur species, wild hoofed animals, * Nikolai Yakimovich Shaparev, Dr. Sci. (Phys.–Math.), is head of a department at the Institute of Computational Simulation, RAS Siberian Branch.
and brown bears); 22 fish species in the Yenisei basin and 11 species in the Ob basin are of a commercial value; about 77 800 km2 of cedar forests; 40 species of edible mushrooms, which occupy about 10% of the forested territory; wildgrowing berries; and about 100 species of medicinal plants. The mineral feedstock includes 83 resources located in 1300 fields and prospected occurrences. The share of Krasnoyarsk krai in the country’s struc ture of prospected mineral resources is as follows: coal, 24%; iron ore, 3%; copper, 43%; nickel, 71%, cobalt, 40%; lead, 41.7%; antimony, 55%; silver, 6%; gold, 13%, platinoids, 99.9%; oil, 0.7%; and natural gas, 1.4%. The gross value of the prospected mineral reserves is $2.3 trillion (9% of the country’s total). Of them, 78.2% are fuel–energy resources; 12%, ferrous and nonferrous metals; and 8.2%, noble metals. The availability of comparably rich natural resources has lead to the krai’s development as a raw material region. The share of the gross regional prod uct (GRP) and budget depended 50 to 70% on mineral resources in different years. The essence of the transition to sustainable nature management (SNM) is the supremacy of natural (bio spheric) laws over the laws of socioeconomic develop ment and the possibly equal provision of different gen erations with natural resources. The Russian Federal Law On the Protection of the Natural Environment states that nature, the environment, and nature man agement underlie sustainable development (SD) [1]. According to the Concept for Transition of the Rus sian Federation to Sustainable Development, it is nec essary to “transfer to sustainable development to pro vide balanced solutions to socioeconomic tasks and to preserve a friendly environment and naturalresource potential to meet the vital needs of both current and future generations” [2]. The above will require regional index systems for regional administration, access to information resources in regional account ability systems and to regional administrative pro grams to fill the regional index systems with content; the economic feasibility of Krasnoyarsk krai’s ecosys tems for admissible anthropogenic impacts; informa tional, legal, economic, educational, instructional,
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and enlightening guidelines for transition to SNM; and the orientation and restructuring of the economy toward SNM. Item 5 of the Concept stipulates the framework for decision making and SD indicators. It also points to the possible use of indicators in solving regional prob lems of transition to sustainable development. The index system should characterize the state (quantity and quality), the level of consumption, the character of use, the security and protection, and the renewal and reproduction of natural resources. For controlling the transition to SD and evaluating the effectiveness of means and decisions made, it is necessary to establish SNM targets and limiting indi cators that reflect the specific consumptions of natural resources and the generation of waste per capita and per GRP unit. The SNM index system can be meth odologically based on the index system of sustainable forest management, approved by the Federal Forestry Service, order no. 21 of February 5, 1998 [3]. The indi cators should take into account the reporting systems and legal acts of the Russian Federation and Krasno yarsk krai on nature management, the experience in creating international and UNgeneralized SD indi cators, and incorporate stateoftheart knowledge. Sustainable nature management needs a system of criteria and indicators. Criteria are practical keys for achieving the goal of the governmental policy, which shapes the main principles, requirements, and mech anisms for the harmonious development of society. The criteria will be evaluated by the totality of their quantitative and qualitative indicators. Sustainability in development is assessed by the dynamics of indica tors and their values within definite limits. Analysis of the datafilled index system makes it possible to evalu ate the direction of changes in nature management. Nature management has the following stages: the use of a resource, its protection and maintenance, its renewal or the reproduction of the mineralresource base, and its replacement. The SNM indicators should reflect the above stages. They are the guidelines of the governmental nature management policy under the Environmental Doctrine of the Russian Federation (Instruction of the Russian Government no. 1225r of August 31, 2002) [4]. Indicators of regional sustainable nature manage ment should comply with Russia’s SNM indicators. However, while Russia’s indicators are averaged, regional indicators are tied to a particular administra tive unit and specified by the natural climatic condi tions, the availability and distribution of natural resources, the territorial distribution of the population and the economy, and regional interactions. Sustain ability in regional and federal nature management should be integral. Note that the administrative–terri torial community, the economy, and the management of available natural resources starts and manifests itself at the regional level. HERALD OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
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Under governmental contract no. 37/2008 with the Ministry for Natural Resources and Forestry of Kras noyarsk krai, a regional SNM index system has been worked out to include criteria with the corresponding targets and totality of indicators for land, water, atmo spheric, biological, forest, and mineral resources, as well as for production and consumption wastes with economic, environmental, and social parameters. The system has 17 criteria and 152 indicators. It is difficult, of course, to create an SNM system on their basis, but their totality is, in fact, a bank of indicators. The Regional Complex System of 28 SNM indicators has been created on the basis of resource indicators in Krasnoyarsk krai. This index system will monitor the state and use of natural resources, showing trends in the dynamics of their parameters and inducing management decisions for transition to safe and then sustainable development within the regional ecocapacity, which serves the interests of the krai’s population and the national interests of Russia. Data obtained with the SNM indi cators are signals for making administrative decisions based on institutional principles. Institutional principles are key factors for the tran sition to SNM. The main objectives of the federal and regional governments in institutional development must be the following: • adopting and supporting an effective legislation to solve the economic, social, environmental, and naturemanagement problems of sustainable develop ment; • enforcing the role of governmental institutions, developing their relevant infrastructure, ensuring transparency and accountability, and creating effective administrative and court institutions at the federal and regional levels; • stimulating the development of public activity through informational access to legislative require ments, governmental policies, and administrative action plans; enforcing the participation of the public in shaping and implementing the SNM policy; and • forming education, instruction, and enlighten ment for SD [5]. We can find the initial definition of the term sus tainable development in the Concept for Transition of the Russian Federation to Sustainable Development and in Russia’s international documents, agreements, and treaties. The term’s logical meaning reflects the understanding of an interconnected balance between economic, social, and environmental interests. To our deep regret, the decree has turned into a declaration. According to the Concept, the main direction in Rus sia’s transition to SD is the creation of a legal base, including the improvement of the existing legislation, which determines, in particular, economic mecha nisms for the regulation of nature management and environmental protection. In this sense the federal law Vol. 79
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on environmental protection stipulates for the first time “the legal principles of the state’s environmental policy that harmonize socioeconomic objectives with a friendly environment, biodiversity, and natural resources to meet the needs of the current and future generations, enforce environmental law and order, and ensure environmental safety” [1]. The Environmental Doctrine of the Russian Fed eration claims that the “strategic goal of the govern ment’s environmental policy is to preserve natural sys tems, maintain their integrity and lifesupporting functions for sustainable development, improve the quality of life, enhance human health, upgrade the demographic situation, and provide for the country’s environmental safety” [4], while the main directions of the government’s environmental policy are to ensure SNM, reduce environmental pollution, pre serve resources, and rehabilitate the natural environ ment. The Land Code, the Water Code, the Federal Law On the Protection of Atmospheric Air, the Federal Law On the Animal World, and the Federal Law On Subsurface treat SNM to varying degrees. Let us now discuss the Law On Protecting the Environment in Krasnoyarsk Krai [6]. Note that the preamble and fur ther textual part lack an understanding of SD and SNM. Russia has no governmental body responsible for SD problems, already set by some federal laws. Under the current situation, administrative regulation in nature management must be strictly supported by legal administrative measures, since “in the conditions of emerging market relations and low market culture, many economic factors act outside the legal field, bypassing the law and generating consequences oppo site to the initially planned intentions. Thus, there are no guarantees that, in the absence of the proper legal regulation, economic factors will affect environmental relations as planned” [7]. At present, the components of the nature manage ment machinery work without coordination with one another. They can work effectively only in a normally functioning market economy. Thus, “the current eco nomic mechanisms do not fulfill their mission and do not harmonize economic and environmental inter ests,” while their legal support remains schematic (“roadmap to nowhere”) [7]. One of the main conditions for bringing a resource region to an SD trajectory is the formation of a new economic mechanism of nature management, which would ensure the rational use of natural resources and create sufficient stability in the region for longterm socioeconomic development. A system of payments for natural resources underlies this mechanism [8]. Economic implementation of SD means that total capital (including human, natural capital, human
made capital, and social capital) should not shrink with passing generations [9, 10]. The majority of natural taxes as elements of the tax ation mechanism have been established by the federal legislation and do not contain any stimuli for the ratio nal and integrated use of natural resources. The regional authorities have very insignificant tax levers to affect nature management in their region. The main share of payments for the use of natural resources that yield the largest revenues goes to the federal budget. The majority of Krasnoyarsk krai’s administrative– territorial economies are based on the exploitation of natural resources. However, payments for them do not play a considerable role in the krai’s budget. Their share in the total budgetary revenues in the recent past did not exceed 8.5%, and now it is even decreasing [8]. Insignificant revenues from the above payments do not allow us to speak about any benefits received by the krai’s residents from the use of their natural resources and moreover about the creation of financial funds to support SD in the region after the depletion of its non renewable natural resources. The tax revenues are insufficient even for financing the effective mainte nance and protection of natural resources or for their renewal and reproduction. For example, the maxi mum land tax revenues in 2006 accounted for 695.1 million rubles, including 120 million rubles for farmlands. To restore the arable lands lost over the reform years (about 1 million hectares), it is necessary to evenly spend more than 5 billion rubles a year for 10 years. The budgetary expenses on agriculture now account for about 2 billion rubles. According to our evaluations, about 0.5 billion rubles are required to maintain, protect, restore, and manage Krasnoyarsk krai’s forest fund. Payments for the use of forest resources in the krai’s budget account for no more than 0.3 billion rubles. The procreation of mineral resources, particularly, gold, is coming to an end [11]. Certainly, the financial flows from the use of natu ral resources are not limited to payments for their exploitation, since natureexploiting enterprises also pay other taxes. However, in this case, the channels of distribution of natural rent remain so masked that it is impossible to track its traffic. The current system of payments for natural resources, as well as the tax system, does not corre spond to the SD objectives of a resource region. Fur ther improvement of the taxation system requires a change in the composition and structure of resource payments, an increase in their role, and simultaneous profit and labor tax cuts. It is also necessary to bring the mechanism of the taxes on the extraction of non renewable mineral resources in conformity with the rent principles of taxation. Since the issues of develop ment and exploitation of natural objects are decided on the regional level, resource regions must be in charge of the management, maintenance, renewal, and reproduction of natural resources, as well as of
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coping with unfavorable consequences from the devel opment and exploitation of natural objects. The share of payments channeled to the budgets of rawmaterial territories must increase, and regional authorities should have the right of introducing individual taxa tion elements to have additional levers for regulating nature management processes on their territories. For renewable resources, the transition to SD implies their maintenance at a definite level and the creation of processing facilities that output products with a higher added value and that support fair living standards of people. This means that renewable resources, especially those in deficit, should be exploited at a rate that is lower than or comparable to the rate of their renewal. In relation to nonrenewable resources, the key strategy is to receive rent revenues and use them to create a stability margin for the long term socioeconomic development of a territory after its mineral resources are depleted. We should particularly note that taxes and pay ments for natural resources are nontarget now. Cer tainly, strict target fixation is an inexpedient and hard toimplement measure because of the great variety of governmental expenditures. However, we believe that the opposite rule should be applicable to payments for natural resources. The target use of natural taxes and payments is conditioned by the SD principles and, in the first place, by the principle of preserving a region’s aggregate capital value [9, 10]. The key mechanism to implement this principle during economic develop ment is the reliable reinvestment of revenues from the exploitation of natural resources into renewable (nat ural, financial, and human) capital. Since simple crediting of revenues from natural taxes to the budget system does not guarantee their use for SD purposes, financial flows generated by environmental payments and mineral taxes should be connected with financial flows that create stability margins. This work models a system of payments for natural resources, considering mineral resources as nonre newable and forest resources as renewable. Consider ing the shortcomings of the existing specific taxation system in the resource sector and the significant potential role of payments for natural resources in cre ating conditions for the transition of a mineral resource territory to the SD principles, it is advisable to reform the system of natural taxes and payments [8]. In general, a mineral tax system should meet the SD objectives and have the following structure: • Payments for subsurface use. In essence, this form of payments is a rental charge. Since, under the law, mineral resources are now state property, their licens ing must be payable. The size of payments depends on the site area. In addition, subsurface users are to pay irrespective of the results of their business activity. These payments must support social programs. HERALD OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
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• Rental charges should be individually specified for each mineral deposit. They are to redeem differential rent generated at the richest deposits, to form the funds of future generations, and to diversify rawmate rial economies. • Allocations for the reproduction of the mineral resource base should provide for its reproduction in the region. • Environmental taxes and levies are to compensate for environmental damage as a result of mineral extraction and to develop a network of specially pro tected territories and reserves. These are various taxes and payments for atmospheric emissions, water pol lutants, waste disposal, and other anthropogenic envi ronmental hazards. Since the main negative conse quences impact the disturbed territory, the major share of the revenues should stay in regional budgets to mit igate environmental damage, as well as to develop the networks of specially protected territories and reserves. Considering the shortcomings of the existing sys tem of payments for the use of renewable forest resources, a specific tax system should include the fol lowing payments: • Rentals are payable to the owner of a forest fund for the use of resources. It is necessary that this pay ment is fixed at a minimally acceptable flat rate depending on the area of the forest fund. These reve nues must finance social programs. • Reforestation payments should be based on the standard costs of forest management, renewal, and protection. • Rental payments are to redeem differential forest rent for each felling site. They should be channeled to the development of woodprocessing operations and environmentally safe nature management (tourism, processing of wildgrowing plants, etc.). • Environmental payments are fines payable for damage to the forest fund (pollution, destruction, etc.), and they should fully compensate for environ mental damage to the forest fund and ensure the devel opment of the network of specially protected territo ries and reserves. Note that the majority of the krai’s forest users are nowadays in a difficult financial situation for several objective reasons: the underdeveloped transport infra structure, remoteness from markets, poorly developed woodprocessing in the timber regions, and sales mar ket monopoly. Thus, higher forest taxes would worsen the position of forest operators, which may have a neg ative effect on the socioeconomic indicators in the krai’s forest regions. A way out of this situation is in changing the specific forest tax system and in the simultaneous reduction in the tax burden on such fac tors of production as labor and capital. The positive socioeconomic effect of the above measures has been reported more than once [12]. Vol. 79
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Solutions to SNM problems come with skilled labor and an informed population. The knowledge required in this case should include the following: environmental problems caused by human interac tions with the environment, the state of the natural resource base, and socioeconomic problems. Sustain able development requires knowledge of intercon nected social, economic, and environmental– resource problems and knowledgebased decision making. Such knowledge must be obtained through education, upbringing, and enlightenment and must include local, regional, and global components. It is also important to apply this knowledge to the tech niques of optimizing interrelations in the society– nature–economy system. The United Nations declared the years 2005 through 2014 the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The European Economic Commission (EEC) adopted in 2005 the EEC Strategy on Educa tion for Sustainable Development. Russia signed the Bologna Declaration, joining the European educa tional space, and an agreement with the EEC about Russia’s participation in the global decade of educa tion for SD. Education for sustainable development raises gen eral cultural problems, trying to shape environmen tally, economically, and socially oriented values, safe environmental behavior stereotypes, and accountable decisionmaking practices. Therefore, educational regulations must contain requirements that reflect the results of education for SD. This can be implemented through the regional educational component. It is necessary to correctly define the priorities and enforce those areas of the educational policy that would help promote and implement the SD ideas. This is how N.S. Kasimov characterized the cur rent SD situation in his “Innovation Vector: From Environmental Education to Education in Sustain able Development: Education for Sustainable Devel opment” [13]: (1) The professional community of educators, organizers of education, experts in environ mental policy, and scientific workers support the idea of sustainable development. This idea is becoming exclusively important nowadays in the emerging multipolar world. (2) Note that the ideology of sustainable devel opment is a form of civil worldview that harmo nizes specialized knowledge with humanitarian views and practical skills of using and establish ing them. (3) Currently Russia has the necessary condi tions and prerequisites to shape and roll out a national system of education for sustainable development. They are based on the experience of the domestic educational school, the prac tices of foreign colleagues, and the achieve
ments of global and domestic science in envi ronmentalism and development. The govern ment’s political will and specific decisions of the Russian Ministry of Science and Education will be sufficient for implementation. (4) Note that the formation of a system of edu cation for sustainable development is a complex and important task. Its success depends on the adequacy of educational technologies and the personal qualities of educators, who must be not only carriers of multidisciplinary professional knowledge “but also its convinced propagan dists and even, possibly, preachers of the ideas of sustainable development.” The education for SD will weaken the social ten sion growing in Russian society and will prepare spe cialists for transition to SNM. For Russia’s transition to sustainable development, an SD strategy together with SD programs must be elaborated, and a law on Russia’s sustainable develop ment must be adopted. This law must include defini tions, SD principles, regulations, and the legal frame work. We should return to the Concept of Sustainable Development of the Russian Federation and be aware of the situation in which we live. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported in part by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Krasnoyarsk Krai’s Science Foundation, project no. 090598016 r_sibir’_a, and the Russian Presidential Grants for Leading Scientific Schools, grant no. NSh 3428.2006.9. REFERENCES 1. The Russian Federal Law On the Protection of the Natu ral Environment of Jan. 10, 2002, No. 7FZ. 2. Concept for Transition of the Russian Federation to Sus tainable Development. The Decree of the Russian Pres ident of Apr. 1, 1996, No. 440. 3. The Order of the Russian Federal Forestry Service of Feb. 5, 1998, No. 21. 4. The Environmental Doctrine of the Russian Federation. The Instruction of the Russian Government of Aug. 31, 2002, No. 1225r. 5. A. S. Shestakov, “Institutional Foundations of Sustain able Use of Natural Resources,” in Nature Use and Sus tainable Development: Global Ecosystems and Russia’s Problems, Ed. by V. M. Kotlyakov, A. M. Tishkov, and G. V. Sdasyuk (KMK, Moscow, 2006), pp. 388–412. 6. Law On Environment Protection in Krasnoyarsk Krai of Dec. 6, 2007, No. 3–804. 7. T. V. Petrova, Legal Problems of the Economic Mecha nism of Environmental Protection (Zertsalo, Moscow, 2004) [in Russian]. 8. O. S. Nagaeva and N. Ya. Shaparev, “The Role of Pay ments for Natural Resources in Creating Conditions
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9. 10. 11. 12.
for Regional Sustainable Development,” Region ologiya, No. 3 (2008). H. E. Daily, “Toward Some Operational Principles of Sustainable Development,” Ecol. Econ., No. 2 (1990). H. E. Daily, “On Wilfred Beckerman’s Critique of Sus tainable Development,” Environmental Values, No. 4 (1995). N. Ya. Shaparev, “Natural Resources of Krasnoyarsk Krai,” Vestn. Ross. Akad. Nauk, No. 4 (2007). D. S. L’vov, A. D. Gusev, O. E. Medvedeva, et al., “Tax Replacement Mechanism as the Main Condition of
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Economic Growth (Ensuring Russia’s Accelerated Economic Growth Based on the Efficient Use of Resource Rent),” Ekon. Prirodopol’zovaniya, No. 2 (2003). 13. N. S. Kasimov, “Innovation Vector: From Environ mental Education to Education in Sustainable Devel opment: Education for Sustainable Development,” in Proceedings of the AllUnion Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, Ed. by N. S. Kasimov and V. S.Tikunov (Madzhenta, Moscow, 2003).
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