Environmental Standards and Norms for the Sustainability

Course Outcomes

The course is devoted to the main issues of the development and application of the environmental standards and norms to maintain the sustainable development. We tried to make this course as modern as possible, taking into account a rapid change of the information on the state of our environment, new theories about the interaction between human society and the environment. And of course, it is necessary to be aware of the development of standardization and legislation in the countries of the world. So, except numerous scientific papers, it will be necessary to use these “tedious” materials.

• Find the best instruments for environmental regulation as a base for the achievement of sustainable development goals
• Calculate the environmental quality indexes and interpret them
• Justify and assess the water, air, soil quality norms, and to set environmental impact norms
• Justify the most adequate models for the description of the environmental systems and their stability under the conditions of technogenic pressure
• Develop the balanced policy of the sustainability

How will taking this course help me in my everyday life?  Well ... it is unlikely that this course will allow you to immediately get rich on the stock exchange or cook something exotic... Seriously, we have developed this course so that you can learn why environmental standards are needed, how they are created and applied. And, oddly enough, we really encounter them every day: they are respected (and then nature and we are protected) or not respected (and this is a threat to sustainability). And when the standard is not created, we cannot prove that someone has polluted the environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL NORMS AND STANDARDS FOR THE SUSTAINABILITY

1. Introduction. Sustainability and sustainable development. Nature management and environmental safety. Sustainability of the natural systems and their development trajectory. Environmental norms as an instrument of nature management. Types of the standards.
2. Environmental norms and regulations for atmosphere protection. Factors of the pollution and self-purification of the atmosphere. Main models of atmospheric pollution. Norms of the atmospheric quality: approaches to the setting of norms and examples. Regulation of atmospheric pollution.
3. Environmental norms and regulations for the protection of water quality. Factors of the pollution and self-purification of the water bodies. Basic models of the pollution of water flows: the Russian experience. Norms of water quality.
4. Environmental norms and regulations for the protection of soil. Soil quality standards: approaches to the justification of norms, types of norms, examples.
5. Waste in nature management. Pyramid of waste management. Waste as the “secondary resources”: recycling and “waste to energy” technologies. Norms for the assessment of the waste danger. Norms of waste formation, accumulation, storage, and processing.
6. Specific environmental pollutants and their regulation. Oil and petroleum products in the environmental media: some regulation approaches in Russia and abroad. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their regulation in the environments: main environmental properties of PAHs, their marker role, examples of the norms in the world.Waste in nature management.

About the authors

A team of the environmental specialists of the RUDN-University, Moscow,

Prof. Alexander Khaustov,

Associate Prof. Margarita Redina,

M.Sc. Polina Silaeva,

authors of the

•          more than 10 environmental standards for the Russian fuel and energy companies

•          EIA for more than 20 Russian and joint projects of oil exploration

•          Manual for a university course on environmental norms and regulations used in more than 100 universities of Russia

•          First university course on HSE-management in the oil and gas sector using virtual training technologies in Russia