Ecological Systems and Devices Annotation << Back DEVELOPMENT AND PROSPECTS OF ECOLOGICAL TOURISM IN THE MURMANSK REGION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF THE REGION S.N. Zhagina, V.A. Svetlosanov, V.A. Nizovtsev, O.M. Pakhomova The purpose of this work is to analyze the development of ecological tourism in the Murmansk region. Recently, both in Russia and abroad, ecological tourism has become very popular. In Western literature, it is called "soft" tourism. This type of tourism should minimize environmental damage, as opposed to tourism, which aims to extract the maximum benefit from travel. Ecotourism is tourism that provides minimal human impact on the landscapes he visits. First of all, this is an active, educational recreation of people, the implementation of amateur or organized (regulated) trips to visit natural (natural) landscapes to get acquainted with geological and water objects, with flora and fauna, with monuments of nature, history and national culture, characteristic of the territory, including educational and environmental activities. Particular attention is paid to the development of a new innovative direction - the organization of national tourist trails, which are amateur routes with the provision of the necessary infrastructure for tourists. The paper concludes that the development of ecological tourism is promising both for protected areas and for the sustainable development of the Murmansk region as a whole. Keywords: Murmansk region, ecological tourism, protected areas, sustainable development, ecological trails. DOI: 10.25791/esip.3.2022.1287 Pp. 03-08.