Specific features of evaluation of natural capital of territory as indicator of sustainable development

Natural resources are of great importance for social and economic development of resource regions. Primary production makes a significant contribution to Gross Regional Product. The use of natural capital of the territory is the basis of primary production. The term "natural capital of the territory", which significantly expands opportunities of economic analysis of environmental management, is more and more frequently used in planning and evaluation of regional development. According to UN approach the value of natural resources (natural capital) is defined as capitalized annuity for the period of their full depletion. At the same time taking into account the fact that there are no clear guidelines for natural capital evaluation, experts use available information about world market prices or so called expert estimates, which are based on expert's subjective opinion. The results of appraisal of the same object obtained by different experts may differ significantly. This fact reduces the scope of application of this analysis technique for regional development appraisal as well as for intersectoral and interregional comparison. This paper gives comparative analysis of calculation of the value of oil reserves in Tomsk Oblast based on the internal and external market prices. Dynamics of the value of reserves, annuity, internal and external market price change is considered. It is suggested to include indicators representing the change of natural capital in the number of macroeconomic indicators of regional development. The necessity of continuous monitoring of these indicators as a part of indicators of regional development as well as the possible use of an index which represents the difference between the prices on regional and federal levels as an additional indicator of regional development sustainability is substantiated. Regional appraisals of natural capital of the territory, where production of fuel and power resources is a dominating sector is to be started with evaluation and comparison of annuity flows on regional and federal levels. The analysis performed made it possible to make a suggestion that it is necessary to transform institutional conditions in the sphere of use of subsurface resources on the basis of development of mechanisms of reinvestment of natural annuity into social and economic development of the region.

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