Porto Romano, on the outskirts of the Albanian port of Durres on the Adriatic Coast, is an old le... more Porto Romano, on the outskirts of the Albanian port of Durres on the Adriatic Coast, is an old leather-tanning and pesticide-producing complex abandoned since 1990. Following the collapse of the totalitarian regime, waves of rural migrants from northeast Albania looking for economic prosperity settled in the area. In the late 1990s, refugees of the Kosovo conflict also made their home here. Rudňany is a village situated in the eastern part of the Slovak Republic. Migrant workers from the Roma ethnic minority attracted by the 1960s boom in the metal-processing industry settled down on the outskirts of the village.
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
The quality and implementation of climate change policies generally benefit from the involvement ... more The quality and implementation of climate change policies generally benefit from the involvement of diverse stakeholders. In 2018, the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic commissioned an elaboration of the National Action Plan (NAP) for implementation of the National Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change (NAS). A structured process, including a panel of experts and the participation of stakeholders, was designed to establish and evaluate policy options for the NAP. The panel members involved high-ranking officials from the relevant ministries and public agencies involved in nature protection, forestry, water management, and public health, as well as academics, representatives of regional and local governments, businesses, and members of non-governmental organisations. Delphi and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were applied in order to evaluate the policy options. Interactive online tools were developed to perform the Delphi and AHP exercises. In the Delphi process, the participants drafted a comprehensive catalogue of challenges and potential policy activities in relation to adaptation to climate change in Slovakia. The AHP exercise evaluated and ranked 32 policy measures for eight specific policy objectives on the criteria of importance, urgency and feasibility.
Transport infrastructure development is considered one of the basic structural preconditions of c... more Transport infrastructure development is considered one of the basic structural preconditions of competitiveness, growth and economic development in Slovakia. Transport network upgrading in the country has recently been focused mainly on road and motorway networks. The goal of this paper is to contribute to existing approaches to transport infrastructure impact assessment. The paper presents selected results of qualitative research focused on an analysis of the R1 expressway (as a part of TEN-T network) and its impacts on the economic, social and environmental dimensions of life at the local territorial level. The paper also seeks to answer the basic question, whether and to what extent the new section of the expressway brings any stimuli to regional or local development. Qualitative research realized by field sociological methods has shown new data and information necessary for a complex assessment of transport infrastructure impacts on social and economic development of regions. We...
... Social solidarity, human rights and Roma: unequal access to basic resources in Central and Ea... more ... Social solidarity, human rights and Roma: unequal access to basic resources in Central and Eastern Europe Richard Filcˇák and ... European region in which poverty correlates with ethnic marginalisation and exclusion (for example, Barany, 1994, 1998; Emigh and Szelenyi, 2001 ...
The chapter follows the story of a small town, Laborov, Slovakia. The local environmental agenda ... more The chapter follows the story of a small town, Laborov, Slovakia. The local environmental agenda has been evolving around two highly controversial issues: campaigns against a plan to build a coal burning power plant and waste management practices stigmatising local Roma community. The endeavour to prohibit the construction of the power plant can be on one hand considered an example of successful short-term popular mobilisation and community resistance to environmentally irresponsible big capital investment. On the other hand, the story cannot be fully understood without analysing ruling class collective interests as well as the context of local inter-ethnic relations. A constituting feature of local social order is Roma marginalisation and institutional discrimination where waste management plays an important role. Hidden beneath the surface are patterns of class and ethnic oppression - opening an important question of framing environmental justice which can be hardly pursued without achieving social justice.
This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak re... more This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak regions in the period of 2008–18. Firstly; we review literature on key approaches to evaluating energy and emission efficiency; followed by discussing the pros and cons of specific methods. A slacks-based model of data envelopment analysis is applied in order to investigate changing patterns of energy and emission efficiency in 79 Slovak regions (LAU 1). Thereafter; changes in energy and emission efficiency are associated with policy interventions supported by the European Structural and Cohesion Funds (ESCF) in the period of 2011–15. The evaluation found no support for the hypothesis with regard to the positive impact of the ESCF on the increase in energy and emission efficiency. Combined support from three ESCF policy measures (€606.44m) was substantial; but accounted for a mere 6.3% of the total firm expenditure on product and process innovations in the period of 2007–15 (€9,573m). Prod...
While Slovakia has made many progressive environmental improvements by introducing new measures a... more While Slovakia has made many progressive environmental improvements by introducing new measures and approaches, many of the key identified challenges and threats linked to our production and consumption patterns must be more adequately addressed. Here, the 'Pilot Scenáre 2020' study is the first complex experiment to apply quantitative and qualitative approaches and participatory methods. Three short-term scenarios have been developed to identify the trends, weak signals and possible "wild cards". In addition, further 2019 implementation with the full use of a participatory approach is planned for the preparation of Slovakia's nature until 2030; and this has ultimate vision until 2050.
Porto Romano, on the outskirts of the Albanian port of Durres on the Adriatic Coast, is an old le... more Porto Romano, on the outskirts of the Albanian port of Durres on the Adriatic Coast, is an old leather-tanning and pesticide-producing complex abandoned since 1990. Following the collapse of the totalitarian regime, waves of rural migrants from northeast Albania looking for economic prosperity settled in the area. In the late 1990s, refugees of the Kosovo conflict also made their home here. Rudňany is a village situated in the eastern part of the Slovak Republic. Migrant workers from the Roma ethnic minority attracted by the 1960s boom in the metal-processing industry settled down on the outskirts of the village.
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
The quality and implementation of climate change policies generally benefit from the involvement ... more The quality and implementation of climate change policies generally benefit from the involvement of diverse stakeholders. In 2018, the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic commissioned an elaboration of the National Action Plan (NAP) for implementation of the National Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change (NAS). A structured process, including a panel of experts and the participation of stakeholders, was designed to establish and evaluate policy options for the NAP. The panel members involved high-ranking officials from the relevant ministries and public agencies involved in nature protection, forestry, water management, and public health, as well as academics, representatives of regional and local governments, businesses, and members of non-governmental organisations. Delphi and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were applied in order to evaluate the policy options. Interactive online tools were developed to perform the Delphi and AHP exercises. In the Delphi process, the participants drafted a comprehensive catalogue of challenges and potential policy activities in relation to adaptation to climate change in Slovakia. The AHP exercise evaluated and ranked 32 policy measures for eight specific policy objectives on the criteria of importance, urgency and feasibility.
Transport infrastructure development is considered one of the basic structural preconditions of c... more Transport infrastructure development is considered one of the basic structural preconditions of competitiveness, growth and economic development in Slovakia. Transport network upgrading in the country has recently been focused mainly on road and motorway networks. The goal of this paper is to contribute to existing approaches to transport infrastructure impact assessment. The paper presents selected results of qualitative research focused on an analysis of the R1 expressway (as a part of TEN-T network) and its impacts on the economic, social and environmental dimensions of life at the local territorial level. The paper also seeks to answer the basic question, whether and to what extent the new section of the expressway brings any stimuli to regional or local development. Qualitative research realized by field sociological methods has shown new data and information necessary for a complex assessment of transport infrastructure impacts on social and economic development of regions. We...
... Social solidarity, human rights and Roma: unequal access to basic resources in Central and Ea... more ... Social solidarity, human rights and Roma: unequal access to basic resources in Central and Eastern Europe Richard Filcˇák and ... European region in which poverty correlates with ethnic marginalisation and exclusion (for example, Barany, 1994, 1998; Emigh and Szelenyi, 2001 ...
The chapter follows the story of a small town, Laborov, Slovakia. The local environmental agenda ... more The chapter follows the story of a small town, Laborov, Slovakia. The local environmental agenda has been evolving around two highly controversial issues: campaigns against a plan to build a coal burning power plant and waste management practices stigmatising local Roma community. The endeavour to prohibit the construction of the power plant can be on one hand considered an example of successful short-term popular mobilisation and community resistance to environmentally irresponsible big capital investment. On the other hand, the story cannot be fully understood without analysing ruling class collective interests as well as the context of local inter-ethnic relations. A constituting feature of local social order is Roma marginalisation and institutional discrimination where waste management plays an important role. Hidden beneath the surface are patterns of class and ethnic oppression - opening an important question of framing environmental justice which can be hardly pursued without achieving social justice.
This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak re... more This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak regions in the period of 2008–18. Firstly; we review literature on key approaches to evaluating energy and emission efficiency; followed by discussing the pros and cons of specific methods. A slacks-based model of data envelopment analysis is applied in order to investigate changing patterns of energy and emission efficiency in 79 Slovak regions (LAU 1). Thereafter; changes in energy and emission efficiency are associated with policy interventions supported by the European Structural and Cohesion Funds (ESCF) in the period of 2011–15. The evaluation found no support for the hypothesis with regard to the positive impact of the ESCF on the increase in energy and emission efficiency. Combined support from three ESCF policy measures (€606.44m) was substantial; but accounted for a mere 6.3% of the total firm expenditure on product and process innovations in the period of 2007–15 (€9,573m). Prod...
While Slovakia has made many progressive environmental improvements by introducing new measures a... more While Slovakia has made many progressive environmental improvements by introducing new measures and approaches, many of the key identified challenges and threats linked to our production and consumption patterns must be more adequately addressed. Here, the 'Pilot Scenáre 2020' study is the first complex experiment to apply quantitative and qualitative approaches and participatory methods. Three short-term scenarios have been developed to identify the trends, weak signals and possible "wild cards". In addition, further 2019 implementation with the full use of a participatory approach is planned for the preparation of Slovakia's nature until 2030; and this has ultimate vision until 2050.
The political decision to phase out coal mining in Upper Nitra (Slovak Republic) has been made an... more The political decision to phase out coal mining in Upper Nitra (Slovak Republic) has been made and discussion is now focused on policies , activities and steps in the transition. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are seen to be the key stakeholder in the process. Although the regional position of the mining industry has been steadily declining, it remains the economic backbone of the region. Mechanical calculations would tell us that immediate total closure of the HBP coalmine would most likely increase the regional unemployment rate in the Prievidza district from the current 4.68 % (February 2020) to an estimated range of 8-10 %, depending on the effects of indirect employment from the coal mining. Moreover, future impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on the local economy is difficult to foreseen at this point. The main goal of this publication is to conduct an in-depth analysis of the SME sector in the Upper Nitra region and, through the collection and interpretation of quantitative and qualitative data, provide additional data and information for shaping economic and social policy, planning and programming for the future interventions. Closure of the mines is an opportunity for bigger ambitions than just replacing one sort of job with others. It may be seen to be a challenge of transforming the economy into a low-carbon, climate-change-adapted system.
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