The Natural Potential of Mountains in Bulgaria and Its Sustainable Use - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 43

settlements in Bulgaria (Methodological approach to determining mountain regions
and settlements, 1996), according to which about 2,200 settlements in the coun-
try correspond to the adopted criteria for mountain settlements (Kopralev, In:
Geography of Bulgaria, 2002 ).
The mountain territories are also the subject of consideration from a legal-
normative viewpoint by a number of national and international documents - Law for
Mountain Regions in the Republic of Bulgaria, developed and discussed at its first
reading in the National Assembly in the middle of the 1990s, but still not approved;
European Chart for the Mountain Regions, developed also in the 1990s; Guiding
Principles for Sustainable Spatial Development of the European Continent (includ-
ing also mountain regions), accepted at the 12th session of CEMAT, Hannover,
September 7-8, 2000 , etc. According to these principles the mountain regions,
with their ecological, economic and socio-cultural functions, are accepted to have
exceptional national and European potential and it is respectively considered that
they should be an especially important part of the integrated European territorial-
arrangement (spatial planning) policy. Taking into account that the state borders of
Bulgaria are almost entirely in mountain territories (with the exception of the north-
eastern one with Romania), the formulated principles for the boundary regions are
also valid for them, including those for trans-boundary, trans-national and inter-
regional cooperation. These concern also the region of the Black Sea and the
Caucasus countries, relating to the so-called Pan-European transport corridors and
zones, crossing and respectively including parts of our mountain borders.
Themes concerning the boundary mountain space occupy a special place within
the geographic investigations on the territory of Bulgaria. Complex scientific studies
of this type were carried out as early as the end of the 19th century. Initially these
studies were carried out by west European scientists and some scientists from the
Balkan countries (Ami Boué, Auguste Viquesnel, Jovan Zvijic), and later, also by
a number of Bulgarian scientists/geographers (Anastas Ishirkov, Yordan Zahariev,
Ivan Batakliev, Dimitar Yaranov, Ilia Ivanov, Zhivko Galabov and others). The stud-
ies had a predominantly geomorphologic and landscape character, in the spirit of the
German school at that time, or had an ethnographic emphasis. In more recent times
complex geographic research has been carried out both within the framework of gen-
eral studies of the country, for example “The Natural and Economic Potential of the
Mountains in Bulgaria,” and in regional studies - “Sakar-Strandzha,” “Rhodopes,”
“Blagoevgrad District,” etc. Specialized complex geographic investigations of the
mountain territories along the southern and western borders of Bulgaria were real-
ized in the 1990s within the scope of two scientific projects, financially supported by
the National Science Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science (NSF-MES) -
H3-38/91 and H3-502/95. They were directed towards revealing and evaluating
not only the particular and general natural resource potential, but also the demo-
graphic, socio-economic and recreational-tourist potential. The aim was to intensify
the healthy development of these regions which are boundary and at the same time
peripheral for the country, in the context of the “opening” of the national space,
both within the frames of the Balkan neighborhood and at the Pan-European and
global scale. A number of scientific publications relating to the different physical-
and economic-geographic aspects were issued on the basis of the results of these