Sustainable spatial development: comparison of international and Russian approaches to assessment at the regional level

The relevance of the study of sustainable spatial development issues is determined by the need for developing and implementing effective systems for assessing the balanced interaction of environmental, social and economic factors at the regional level in the context of global challenges. The article compares international and Russian approaches to assessing sustainable spatial development at the regional level. The existing international and domestic methods, indicators and standards of sustainable spatial development are studied. The conclusions are made on the possibility of applying international approaches to Russian realities, a number of barriers to their application are identified (limited availability of data, especially at the level of constituent entities of the Federation; differences in the methodology for calculating and taxonomy of indicators; institutional barriers; insufficient level of involvement of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the processes of developing and testing localized indices). The analysis of the Russian indicators of sustainable spatial development (both institutionalized and presented in scientific and applied literature) is carried out. The results of the analysis showed the predominance of applied indicators focused on monitoring individual aspects (social, economic, environmental), the presence of significant limitations in territorial detail, data consistency and comparability with international approaches. The following discrepancies between Russian and international methods were identified: differences in target focus and level of institutionalization, fragmentation of component coverage, lack of a single methodological aggregation base, insufficient adaptation of international reporting standards, promotion of the ESG approach as the most promising framework, the problem of comparability and integration of data. The directions for the development of the national sustainability assessment system (unification of indicators, institutional consolidation of methods, etc.) are proposed, which not only contribute to methodological convergence with international standards, but also open up opportunities for the formation of a full-fledged territorial monitoring system built into the contour of the state sustainable development policy.