Mining University in Saint-Petersburg, Saint-Petersburg, Russia:

E. B. Safina, Associate Professor, Candidate of Economic Sciences, safinaeliza@yandex.ru
O. Yu. Lebedeva, Associate Professor, Candidate of Economic Sciences

The main negative factors in the nature management and preservation are high depreciation of fixed assets, obsolete technologies and absence of economic incentives to implement nature-conservative measures. In the mining sector of the industry, effect of these factors appreciably elevates environmental threat, which calls for the application of integrated economic tools to promotion and inspiring of environmental activities in the mining industry. The comparative analysis of environmental activity cost in Russia and in the EU countries shows that the environmental investments, both in the national economy as a whole and in the subsoil use sector particularly, remain at the drastically low level. In many ways, this situation is associated with the tax liability imposed on subsoil use subjects in the current environment-related activity regulation mechanism, and with the partial use of separate motivations at a varying degree of effectiveness. For the mining industry, considering technological specificity, scale of accumulated pollutants and the objective essentiality of revitalization of environmental activities, motivation and promotion may become the tools of the highest efficiency. Under the current economic circumstances, it is required to renovate governmental ecological policy to account for the globally approved nature and subsoil management measures that motivate mining industry to preserve natural environment. The implementation of these measures in the framework of the unified mechanism of the governmental regulatory control over environment-related activity of mines is the key condition of meeting global challenges associated with abatement of environmental pollution and enhancement of ecological security in the country.

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