Opportunities for and challenges to urban development and social cohesion in Russia’s Arctic under climate change impacts

The project aims to build a sustainable development and social cohesion strategy for the Russian Arctic towns to mitigate numerous social and environmental challenges and threats in the age of climate change. This will be done with an innovative methodology of sustainability and social cohesion indicators, and key attention will be devoted to the environmental and socio-economic issues in an era of climate change. The Arctic City Sustainable Development Index (ACSDI) will help to measure sustainability and social cohesion outcomes and progress (or the lack of it) toward achieving those outcomes in the Russian Arctic. This analysis will take Arctic local urban development in a global context, examining opportunities and risks of different development trajectories to sustainability in a wider geographical, geoeconomic and geopolitical contexts. The project will investigate associated policy planning issues with the aim to suggest policy recommendations for authorities.