ENVIRONMENTALLY POSITIVE TRENDS ON THE WORLD MAPIN THE FIRST TWO DECADES OF THE XXI CENTURY: GEOGRAPHY, FACTORS AND PROSPECTS

Abstract

Aim. The paper identifies the main factors and possible prospects for the development of environmentally positive processes in the World economy in the first two decades of this century. Methodology. The research is based on the consideration of accumulated theoretical and statistical materials on the environmental characteristics of the development of the world economy, macro-regions and countries of the world. A group of key factors is analyzed that influence the emergence and development of environmentally positive processes on the world map in the last two decades. Based on the economic and geographical interpretation of the environmental curve of S. Kuznets, we predict possible prospects for the development of eco-logically positive processes in macro-regions and countries of the world. Results. The increasing complexity of the relationship between economic growth and its environmental consequences in the first decades of the present century indicates the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in the development of the world economy and the environmental situation on the Earth. The deterioration of the environmental situation in the cores of economic development in the second half of the XX century was replaced by multidirectional environmental trends in macro-regions of the world and individual countries in the first decades of the XXI century. In the coming decades, the environmental situation in the world will become spatially more complex, becoming more and more mosaic. Research implications. In the conditions of almost total domination of alarmism in modern scientific literature and the pronounced predominance of research on a wide range of escalating environmental problems, for the formation of an adequate ecological and geographical picture of the world, it is impossible to ignore the increasingly clearly manifested environmentally positive processes. Otherwise, this complex and contradictory map is bound to be incomplete and one-sided.