Environmental and socio-economic policies in oil and gas regions: triple bottom line approach
Irina Heim, Anne Crowley‐Vigneau, Yelena Kalyuzhnova
Abstract
Sustainability is a critical issue for resource-rich countries encountering environmental and social problems in remote regions and struggling to overcome the national economy's reliance on the oil and gas industry. We explore, through a case study of Russian oil-producing regions, the interdependency of economic, social and environmental issues by analysing the trade-offs between the need to adopt new technology to combat gas flaring and the demand for socioeconomic policies. The findings suggest that international companies can serve as effective vectors for promoting gas flaring technologies if regional governments take a flexible integrated approach to socio-economic and environmental policies formulation.