Development and Implementation of a Systemic Approach to Environmental Risk Assessment on the Territory of the Crimean Peninsula: Achievements and Problems

Risk assessment is currently the most realistic tool for regulating interactions in the "society-nature" system and scientifically based planning of economic development of regions. It is especially important in such multifunctional regions as Crimea, where the extensive development of the peninsula is combined with its major recreational value and geopolitical role.

1. A methodology was developed, methodological approaches to assessing the risk to the health of the peninsula's ecosystems and the population were determined, and they were tested through field studies of various scales.
2. As the main principle of risk assessment for environmental regulation of the impact on the peninsula's ecosystems and public health and subsequent assessment of the environmental situation by determining whether ecosystem standards are exceeded, a scheme of medical-ecological and eco-biophysiological monitoring is proposed, which represents a consistent movement from identifying territories with an unfavorable environmental situation and public health to identifying environmental risk factors (technogenic, taking into account the biogeochemical characteristics of the territories), determining their content in the human body and quantitatively assessing the risk from their presence in the body.
3. Partial implementation of the proposed approaches has been carried out, which has shown the feasibility and prospects of their use for analyzing the real environmental situation and assessing the risk for the peninsula's ecosystems and public health, modeling, forecasting changes and making management decisions on their basis on planning the economic development of the region.
4. Despite the efforts made by Crimean scientists, the main problem of incomplete implementation of the proposed approaches is the lack of state regulation and organization of interaction between departments and scientific institutions that are separately engaged in individual aspects of environmental protection and health issues.
5. It must be acknowledged that there is a risk of impracticability of the tasks due to the complexity of their solution based on field studies, but this is the only possible way to obtain an objective assessment of the real situation. Otherwise, the formation of the noosphere as a scientific regulation of the interaction of nature and human society according to V.I. Vernadsky should be recognized as impossible.

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