ECOSYSTEM APPROACHES TO THE ORGANIZATION OF COMPENSATIVE MEASURES FOR LOSSES REFUND AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

Author(s):  
Iryna Patoka

The aim of the article is to introduce the up-to date approaches to the functioning of the compensation mechanism for the refund of the losses from ecosystems pollution and to elaborate proposals for its implementation in the local environmental policy. The paper identifies the main aspects of the formation of a compensation mechanism for refund of the losses from pollution and degradation of ecosystems at the local level, types of compensatory relations in the environmental sphere, levers of influence of local authorities and business on the implementation of an effective compensation mechanism. Ways and methods of compensation for the refund of the losses from the ecosystems decontamination are structured and instruments of the economic mechanism of compensation at different territorial levels of management are classified. It is proposed to take into account the configurations of reproduction processes in the territory ecosystems while introducing a compensation mechanism for the losses from their decontamination. The compensation mechanism for ecosystem decontamination losses at the local territorial level is proved to be a special type of institutional agreement as to protection and sustainable use of ecosystem services and ecosystems at the local level and adjusting the distribution of costs and benefits between different players and stakeholders mainly via economic means. The priority reforms in the sphere of liability for damage to ecosystems to form a compensation mechanism for compensation in Ukraine are outlined. Prospects for introduction of a compensation mechanism for the refund of the losses from the ecosystems decontamination at the local level are outlined. The reform of decentralization and extension of the local powers allows for the development and implementation of the regulations at the local level that would establish a procedure for the accumulation and use of compensation costs for the destroyed community ecosystems restoration. It will contribute to the receipt of significant compensatory financial resources in local budgets for communities, to be directed exclusively for the compensatory measures.

Author(s):  
Iryna Patoka

The paper proves the need to reform the system of ecological management of protected areas of communities on an ecosystem basis, taking into account the general processes of decentralization and European integration. It is noted that the main problems of adequate assessment of local natural resource potential of communities, in particular the assessment of ecosystem assets of their protected areas, are related to the imperfection of the general methodology of its implementation and the relevant regulatory framework. It is emphasized that the achievement of the goals of sustainable spatial development at the local level is ensured via full mobilization of all types of local resources, e.g. in protected areas, in particular by taking into account the value of ecosystem assets and ecosystem services produced by them in the interests of local communities. It is shown that economic assessments allow to substantiate the economic efficiency of investments in the environmental complex in order to preserve biodiversity, compare the costs and benefits of ecosystem services, as well as calculate the amount of compensation payments. It is determined that the process of assessment of ecosystem assets of territories is a measurement of the total monetary value of ecosystem-related goods and services in the region, i.e. the assessment of ecosystem assets is primarily to assess the ecosystem services produced by these assets. As a result of the study, successive stages of developing an algorithm for assessing ecosystem assets of protected areas of communities with the definition of the main structural components of assessment: valuation of ecosystem services produced by assets of protected areas, using a combination of relevant assessment methods and valuation component of the total local ecosystem asset of a particular territorial community. The calculation of the total value of ecosystem assets of protected areas of communities on the example of Blagodatnenskaya OTG of the Pervomaisky district of the Nikolaev area is executed. Proposals for optimizing the use of ecosystem assets of protected areas of communities have been developed.


2018 ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Mykhailo KRUPKA ◽  
Myroslav KULCHYTSKY ◽  
Viktor KOVALENKO

Introduction. In the conditions of the transformational changes in the national economy, there is a need for modernization of the formation and strengthening of the financial base of local authorities, which are subject to the exercise of powers in accordance with the current legislation of Ukraine. And the very financial decentralization to date allows solving the problematic issues of ensuring the current needs of local self-government bodies, and hence the increase of local budget revenues and the sustainable development of territorial communities. Among the main tasks of the reform of decentralization of the budget system it is an increase in the financial capacity of local self-government and capacity building. At present, financial decentralization is one of the key instruments provided to local self-government in order to implement the strategy of socio-economic development of territories. By providing a significant portion of the financial resources to local self-government, in particular the united territorial communities, the government delegated some of the authority to local councils that are responsible for the management decisions made and the rational use of budget funds. The purposeof the article is to assess the role of local budget revenues as an instrument of the budget mechanism, monitoring their formation and transformation in the context of fiscal decentralization. Results. It has been established that decentralization is necessary to maximally approximate the provision of public services to the population, to improve the management system, to increase the efficiency of problem solving, transmitted to the local level. Financial decentralization reflects the urgent need to ensure the independence of local self-government bodies. The changes made to the Budget and Tax Codes of Ukraine concerning the allocation of local budgets by sources of income are considered. A new model of intergovernmental relations, which provides incentives for local authorities, is outlined. An analysis of the dynamics and structure of local budget revenues for 2013-2017 has been made, which allowed to establish the strengthening of their role as a tool of the budgetary mechanism, taking into account changes that have taken place in the context of decentralization. The features of the new model of intergovernmental relations are considered and the proposals on the formation of the revenue base of local budgets in the context of decentralization are substantiated. Conclusions. As a result of the research, it was found that in order to increase local budget revenues it is expedient to: ensure effective interaction between state authorities, local self-government, private entities and civil society institutions; to improve the mechanism of attraction and use of international technical assistance, financial resources of international financial organizations for the support of regional development; to identify and realize the hidden and underestimated development potential of each region, district, united territorial community; to raise the level of entrepreneurial initiative, use of business opportunities and the level of investment attractiveness in order to implement investment projects; to introduce self-regulation by local government tax rates for real estate and land, as well as providing incentivesfor their payment.


e-Finanse ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Adam Mateusz Suchecki

AbstractFollowing the completion of the process of decentralisation of public administration in Poland in 2003, a number of tasks implemented previously by the state authorities were transferred to the local level. One of the most significant changes to the financing and management methods of the local authorities was the transfer of tasks related to culture and national heritage to the set of tasks implemented by local governments. As a result of the decentralisation process, the local government units in Poland were given significant autonomy in determining the purposes of their budgetary expenditures on culture. At the same time, they were obliged to cover these expenses from their own revenues.This paper focuses on the analysis of expenditures on culture covered by the voivodship budgets, taking into consideration the structure of cultural institutions by their types, between 2003-2015. The location quotient (LQ) was applied to two selected years (2006 and 2015) to illustrate the diversity of expenditures on culture in individual voivodships.


2020 ◽  
pp. 100-112
Author(s):  
Zenoviy Siryk

The issues related to the management of financial resources of territorial communities, financial independence of local governments and forming of efficient financial-investment policy to secure the balanced development of local communities and territories become of utmost importance in conditions of financial decentralization and administrative-territorial reform in Ukraine. The problem issues concerning the forming of financial-investment maintenance of local governance directly impact the capacity of a territorial community that should have financial, material, and other resources in the volumes sufficient to completely accomplish the tasks and function of local governments and provide social services to the population at the level stipulated by national standards. The forming of financial-investment maintenance of local governance is revealed to be directly influencing the capacity of a territorial community that should have financial, material, and other resources in the volumes sufficient to completely accomplish the tasks and function of local governments and provide social services to the population. The expansion of local governments’ competences and granting them greater independence are substantiated to be requiring more responsibility in the financial-investment policy implementation on the local level, forming of conditions to perform the economic activity, and develop businesses by all economic entities, and promoting favorable investment climate in the region. Based on the analysis of approaches to the definition of the nature of “financial maintenance” and “investment maintenance” in the context of the peculiarities of local governments’ activity, the paper suggests understanding the “financial-investment maintenance of local governance” as a set of opportunities and activities on distribution and use of financial resources and territories’ resources for the creation of conditions necessary for the efficient functioning of local governments and realization of their competences.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
T B A

Global warming, climate change is now affecting the world. The effort of the leaders to achieving the sustainable development is from New Urban Agenda (NUA), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and local level is local authorities.  SDG’s goal number 13 takes urgent action to combat climate change and its impact also SDG’s number 11 to sustainable cities and communities. The gap of this paper  Different cities face different challenges and issues. Local authorities will play a significant role in undertaking policy initiatives to combat carbon emissions of the city. Low Carbon Cities (LCC) is to reduce carbon emissions in all human activities in cities.  The objective of this paper is by applying the LCCF Checklist in planning permission for sustainable development. The methodology of this research is a mixed-method, namely quantitative and qualitative approach. The survey methods are by interview, questionnaire, and observation. Town planners are the subject matter expert in managing the planning permission submission for the development control of their areas. Descriptive statistical analysis will be used to show the willingness of the stakeholders, namely the developers and planning consultants in implementing of the LCCF. The contribution of this research will gauge readiness at the local authorities level. The findings of the LCCF checklist are identified as important in planning permission into the development control process. Surprisingly, that challenges and issues exist in multifaceted policy implementation the LCCF Checklist in a local authority. Finally based on Subang Jaya Municipal Councils, the existing approach in the application of the LCCF Checklist in the development control process will be useful for development control in a local authority towards sustainable development.  


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena A. Mikhailova ◽  
Hamdi A. Zurqani ◽  
Christopher J. Post ◽  
Mark A. Schlautman ◽  
Gregory C. Post

Soil ecosystem services (ES) (e.g., provisioning, regulation/maintenance, and cultural) and ecosystem disservices (ED) are dependent on soil diversity/pedodiversity (variability of soils), which needs to be accounted for in the economic analysis and business decision-making. The concept of pedodiversity (biotic + abiotic) is highly complex and can be broadly interpreted because it is formed from the interaction of atmospheric diversity (abiotic + biotic), biodiversity (biotic), hydrodiversity (abiotic + biotic), and lithodiversity (abiotic) within ecosphere and anthroposphere. Pedodiversity is influenced by intrinsic (within the soil) and extrinsic (outside soil) factors, which are also relevant to ES/ED. Pedodiversity concepts and measures may need to be adapted to the ES framework and business applications. Currently, there are four main approaches to analyze pedodiversity: taxonomic (diversity of soil classes), genetic (diversity of genetic horizons), parametric (diversity of soil properties), and functional (soil behavior under different uses). The objective of this article is to illustrate the application of pedodiversity concepts and measures to value ES/ED with examples based on the contiguous United States (U.S.), its administrative units, and the systems of soil classification (e.g., U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Soil Taxonomy, Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) Database). This study is based on a combination of original research and literature review examples. Taxonomic pedodiversity in the contiguous U.S. exhibits high soil diversity, with 11 soil orders, 65 suborders, 317 great groups, 2026 subgroups, and 19,602 series. The ranking of “soil order abundance” (area of each soil order within the U.S.) expressed as the proportion of the total area is: (1) Mollisols (27%), (2) Alfisols (17%), (3) Entisols (14%), (4) Inceptisols and Aridisols (11% each), (5) Spodosols (3%), (6) Vertisols (2%), and (7) Histosols and Andisols (1% each). Taxonomic, genetic, parametric, and functional pedodiversity are an essential context for analyzing, interpreting, and reporting ES/ED within the ES framework. Although each approach can be used separately, three of these approaches (genetic, parametric, and functional) fall within the “umbrella” of taxonomic pedodiversity, which separates soils based on properties important to potential use. Extrinsic factors play a major role in pedodiversity and should be accounted for in ES/ED valuation based on various databases (e.g., National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) databases). Pedodiversity is crucial in identifying soil capacity (pedocapacity) and “hotspots” of ES/ED as part of business decision making to provide more sustainable use of soil resources. Pedodiversity is not a static construct but is highly dynamic, and various human activities (e.g., agriculture, urbanization) can lead to soil degradation and even soil extinction.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 2765
Author(s):  
Joanna Rakowska ◽  
Irena Ozimek

The deployment of renewable energy at the local level can contribute significantly to mitigating climate change, improving energy security and increasing social, economic and environmental benefits. In many countries local authorities play an important role in the local development, but renewable energy deployment is not an obligatory task for them. Hence there are two research questions: (1) Do local governments think investments in renewable energy (RE) are urgent and affordable within the local budgets? (2) How do they react to the public aid co-financing investments in renewable energy? To provide the answer we performed qualitative analysis and non-parametric tests of data from a survey of 252 local authorities, analysis of 292 strategies of local development and datasets of 1170 renewable energy projects co-financed by EU funds under operational programs 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 in Poland. Findings showed that local authorities’ attitudes were rather careful, caused by financial constraints of local budgets and the scope of obligatory tasks, which made renewable energy investments not the most urgent. Public aid was a factor significantly affecting local authorities’ behavior. It triggered local authorities’ renewable energy initiatives, increasing the number and scope of renewable energy investments as well cooperation with other municipalities and local communities. Despite this general trend, there were also considerable regional differences in local authorities’ renewable energy behavior.


Author(s):  
Ioannis Souliotis ◽  
Nikolaos Voulvoulis

AbstractThe EU Water Framework Directive requires the development of management responses aimed towards improving water quality as a result of improving ecosystem health (system state). Ecosystems have potential to supply a range of services that are of fundamental importance to human well-being, health, livelihoods and survival, and their capacity to supply these services depends on the ecosystem condition (its structure and processes). According to the WFD, Programmes of Measures should be developed to improve overall water status by reducing anthropogenic catchment pressures to levels compatible with the achievement of the ecological objectives of the directive, and when designed and implemented properly should improve the ecological condition of aquatic ecosystems that the delivery of ecosystem services depends on. Monitoring and evaluation of implemented measures are crucial for assessing their effectiveness and creating the agenda for consecutive planning cycles. Considering the challenges of achieving water status improvements, and the difficulties of communicating these to the wider public, we develop a framework for the evaluation of measures cost-effectiveness that considers ecosystem services as the benefits from the reduction of pressures on water bodies. We demonstrate its application through a case study and discuss its potential to facilitate the economic analysis required by the directive, and that most European water authorities had problems with. Findings demonstrate the potential of the methodology to effectively incorporate ecosystem services in the assessment of costs and benefits of proposed actions, as well as its potential to engage stakeholders.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gómez-Baggethun ◽  
Manuel Ruiz-Pérez

In the last decade a growing number of environmental scientists have advocated economic valuation of ecosystem services as a pragmatic short-term strategy to communicate the value of biodiversity in a language that reflects dominant political and economic views. This paper revisits the controversy on economic valuation of ecosystem services in the light of two aspects that are often neglected in ongoing debates. First, the role of the particular institutional setup in which environmental policy and governance is currently embedded in shaping valuation outcomes. Second, the broader economic and sociopolitical processes that have governed the expansion of pricing into previously non-marketed areas of the environment. Our analysis suggests that within the institutional setup and broader sociopolitical processes that have become prominent since the late 1980s economic valuation is likely to pave the way for the commodification of ecosystem services with potentially counterproductive effects in the long term for biodiversity conservation and equity of access to ecosystem services benefits.


2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-115
Author(s):  
Mathias Spaliviero

Due to its location, Mozambique suffers from cyclical flooding associated with heavy rains and cyclones. In recent years, extreme flood events affected millions of people, disrupting the economic recovery process that followed the peace agreement in 1992. Despite this natural threat, most of the population continues to live in flood prone areas both in rural environment, due to the dependency on agricultural activities, and in urban environment, since unsafe zones are often the only affordable option for new settlers. This paper presents a brief analytical review on different issues related with urban informal settlements, or slums, based on different project activities developed by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in Mozambique. The aim is to identify applicable strategies to reduce vulnerability in urban slums, where approximately 70 percent of the urban population live. The implemented project activities target different organisational levels in an integrated manner, seeking for active involvement of the Government, local authorities and communities at each implementation stage, from decision-making to practical implementation. They consist of three main components: 1) supporting policy-making in order to ensure sustainable urban development, 2) delivering a comprehensive training and capacity building based on the mainstreaming concept of “Learning How to Live with Floods” as valid alternative to resettlement, and 3) facilitating participatory land use planning coupled with physical upgrading interventions at the local level. In the long-term, the intention of UN-HABITAT is to progressively focus on community-based slum upgrading and vulnerability reduction activities, coordinated by local authorities and actively monitored by central institutions, in improving and managing basic services and infrastructures (i.e. water supply, drainage, sanitation, waste management, road network, etc). This type of bottom-up experiences should then represent a basis for setting up a slum upgrading intervention strategy to be applied at the national level.


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