Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
veloped and widely used - environmental certification of products, production and
control systems, environmental audits, environmental monitoring, spatial planning
etc. And among all instruments aiding sustainable development a principal place
can be given to the institution of environmental assessment.
13.2.2 Main Factors for Sustainable Development in Ukraine
A variety of internal and external factors determine the necessity to implement
principles of sustainable development in Ukraine. The external factors include
both the Ukraine's aspiration for European integration and requirements to comply
with its international obligations.
It should be noted that the system of environmental and resource management
that was formed in Ukraine is highly inefficient. This resulted in the distressing
dynamics of a raising level of environmental pollution and general deterioration of
environment. Ukraine has the highest proportion of ploughed land in Europe, its
economy is characterised by extensive use of water resources and the rapid rate of
deforestation. Anthropogenic and industrial pressure on the Ukrainian environ-
ment is more then three times higher when compared with the relevant indices in
the EU member states (MEP 2008).
A considerable majority of the industrial facilities were built in the 1950s-
1970s and now do not comply with current environmental requirements and recent
achievements in scientific and technical progress. The share of the most environ-
mentally polluting industries - mining and quarrying, energy and chemical -
constitutes approximately 60% of the national GDP. Forty years ago the majority
of adverse environmental impacts were of local character and could have been al-
leviated by individual environmental actions. At present, the crisis situations are
not localised; they affect whole industrial agglomerations and adjacent territories -
for instance, the Krivoi Rog iron-ore basin, the West-Donbass coal basin, and the
Dnepropetrovsk-Dneprodzerzhinsk-Novomoskovsk agglomeration etc. The unsat-
isfactory quality of the environment has a significant impact on human health and
welfare (Palekhov et al. 2008). All these factors heighten the necessity to develop
environmentally sound development strategies.
Building the eco-social market economy became a strategic target for Ukraine
after the country gained independence in 1991. The Ukrainian Constitution of
1996 provided in Art. 16 that the state is obliged to “ensure ecological safety and
to maintain the ecological balance on the territory of Ukraine”. As a result an ad-
vanced system of environmental legislation was developed. It is hierarchical and
governs various social relations in the field of environmental protection, rational
use of natural resources and sustainable development. A variety of framework
documents specify the targets set by Ukrainian environmental policy according to
the principles of sustainable development. These include the: “Main directions of
the national policy of Ukraine for environmental protection, natural resource use
and environmental safety”; “Concept of improving health of the population of
Ukraine”; “Programme for the formation of national ecological network for 2000-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search