The article examines the ecological and economic mechanism for the elimination of accumulated environmental damage (NEU) in the Arctic, the development of recommendations for further improvement of such a mechanism, including programmatic methods. The issues of the state of the environment and environmental safety in the Arctic zone of Russia are considered. The main attention is paid to the formation of a program to eliminate NEU on polluted islands and other territories. The results obtained were included in the development of the Program for the Elimination of Accumulated Environmental Damage on the Polluted Islands of the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, and in the preparation of proposals for the further planning and organization of cleanup work. In general, the cleaning of the islands, carried out in the period 2012-2017, showed high performance. It is necessary to expand this type of work in other contaminated areas located in the Arctic, to develop a special program “Ecological safety of the Arctic zone”, to develop scientific research on Arctic topics.