ИСТИНА

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were set as the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. In 2015 the UN adopted historical Document “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” with 17 SDGs and 169 corresponding targets. The SDGs comprise an integrated balance of all three domains of sustainable development: the economy, society and the natural environment. To reach these goals it is needed to use different quantitative and qualitative indicators based on global, national and country data. One of the world-known indicators EPI (The Environmental Performance Index 2016) was elaborated under international efforts and presented two manuscripts Global Metric for the Environment and Measuring Progress: A Practical Guide from the Developers of the Environmental Performance Index. The project was implemented by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy (YCELP) and Yale Data-Driven Environmental Solutions Group, Yale University, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and different national data centers. EPI ranks countries’ performance in two areas of high-priority environmental policy objectives: Protection of Environment health and Ecosystem Vitality. Within these two objectives, the EPI scores national performance in nine problems’ areas: Climate and Energy, Biodiversity and Habitat, Fisheries, Forests, Agriculture, Water resources, Health Impacts, Air quality, Water sanitation. For each of these problems the indicators were calculated on the base of global and national data to measure countries’ proximity to meeting internationally established SGDs targets. In 2016 there were evaluated 180 countries and the 2016 EPI’s innovations have shaken up the rankings since the Index’s previous iteration. Finland has taken the top spot, followed by Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Slovenia. Russia occupies in the rating the 32 place, improving its rating for 24% during 2 years from the previous investigation and EPI publication. Anyway, 40% of population in Russia is living at the territory occupying 15% of total country area with unfavorable environmental conditions because of air and water pollution, deforestation, biodiversity worsening and forests’ cover loss, waste management. These are the main ecological problems of Russia, which were assessed during the investigation of ecological efficiency indices and collection data on air pollution exposure to NO2, carbon intensity, wastewater treatment, forest cover loss, protected areas, terrestrial habitat protection, and water species protection. As Estimated by the World Wildlife Fund, Russia annually loses about 1 billion dollars from the illegal export of wood. One of the way to improve Russia EPI is adoption in 2014 the Government Act and procedure of the best available technology implementation to decrease negative impact from environmentally hazardous enterprises. It is evident that the 2016 EPI provides an extraordinarily opportunity to influence the future policy in reaching of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is expected that the SDG indicators will become a common reference point for global, national and subnational monitoring.