Territories’ sustainable development and modern management methods

Ensuring sustainable development is one of the most pressing issues of the world community’s concern. This problem was raised in the second half of the XX century and has not been solved up to date, despite the efforts made by scientists, politicians and practitioners all over the world. The main idea of the present article is to assess the success of achieving the sustainable development goals in the Russian Federation, as well as to generalize the current experience of managing the territories’ sustainable development at the federal, regional and municipal levels. It is stated that if the system of views on sustainable development was focused on environmental aspects initially, then gradually the necessity of addressing economic, social and environmental issues in a complex has been realized. As a result, the essence of sustainable development has been significantly expanded. Currently, the model of sustainable development provides for the harmonization of social, economic and environmental components aimed at meeting the needs of both current and future generations. It is emphasized that achieving this goal is necessary for the sustainable development of the world economy. It is shown that the problem of sustainable development is a priority for the Russian Federation where the corresponding concept was adopted in 1996. The author analyzes the achievement of sustainable development goals, the issues of concern to the Russian territories, and management methods successfully used by the local authorities to address the most pressing issues of socio-economic development. It is concluded that it is premature to talk about the sustainable development of Russia, and the Russian territories’ problems are mainly the result of the negative influence of internal factors. It is proposed to expand the range of management tools to influence the internal factors in order to increase development sustainability, taking into account external challenges.