Protected Areas: From Conservation to Development

The establishment and management of protected areas receives increasing attention worldwide. The article presents an analysis of the regulating practice of protected areas. Summarizing the experience of European countries and the United States, the author identifies the features of the legal regulation of protected areas in Russia, as well as trends in the formation and reproduction of these territories, which characterizes the current stage of development, and formulates problems arising within the framework of these trends. In addition, he identifies the basic functions of protected areas – compensatory  and recreational – and concludes that currently these functions are unbalanced in the practice of regulating the system of protected areas. Considering the development of protected areas as one of the ways to enhance the role of ecological tourism in Russia, the author demonstrates a disbalance of budgetary support between natural complexes with a compensatory function, on the one hand, and recreational, on the other. The article emphasizes that a sharp increase in funding for the improvement processes by budget line item of national project can have negative affect over the reproductive mechanisms of the development of the natural environment. The article attempts to apply the techniques of modelling into the management of protected areas in the cities.

 Keywords: protected areas; ecological capacity of the territory; anthropogenic pressure; improvement of public areas; landscaping; ecological tourism