English - Convention on Biological Diversity

COUNTRY STUDY FOR BIODIVERSITY OF THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
Several basic reasons for the permanent loss of biological diversity can be
distinguished:
• A low level of education and a lack of information, especially in rural areas, which
has contributed to a low awareness in the general population of the relationship
between human activities and the environment, the sustainable use of biological
resources and the sustainable transfer of biotechnology;
• Reduced and unstable economic power of the State, in addition to the military
actions that have been rocking the region for a long period of time;
• Growing poverty, which does not recognise the principles of sustainable
development, is manifesting itself through illegal forest and other resource overuse,
hunting and fishing overuse, non-sustainable development of agriculture etc.;
• Inadequate and incomplete legislation which fails to clarify duties or avoid the
overlap of responsibilities and competencies within the agencies responsible for
enforcement;
• Non-compliance with existing regulations;
• Lack of spatial planning regulations for areas with special natural values;
• Uncontrolled urbanisation, deagrarianisation (in the traditional sense) and
industrialisation are the main processes that disturb the environmental balance
(considering the cumulative effects of pollution);
• The continual process of migration of the population from villages to towns.
Increased concentrations of people in urban centres represent a growing problem not
only from a global, socioeconomic aspect but also from a spatial aspect;
• Stagnation of the economy and use of outdated technologies, poor quality of energy
sources resulting from low economic power and lack of treatment of wastewater and
waste gases, which leads to deterioration of the air, soil, surface water and
groundwater quality;
• Outdated spatial planning with insufficient continuity, improper land use changes,
construction of infrastructure systems and previous agricultural conversion;
• The process of earning a profit under highly competitive market conditions, the
permanent trend toward globalisation and the favouring of newer, more profitable
varieties which have fully supplanted the indigenous, low producing and/or less
profitable genetic types.
7.4. Key sectors affecting biodiversity
On the basis of the analysis of data in Section 5., a preliminary ranking of the main
economic sectors can be made in accordance with their effect on biodiversity:
• Agriculture was particularly adversely affected in the decades after World War II.
Most of the marshes and swamps were drained, and arable land was expanded into
other natural habitats without regard for their importance. Another serious threat to
biodiversity was the enlargement of agricultural land surfaces during the period of
nationalisation, when the areas of natural vegetation at the edges of cultivated fields
were destroyed. This, in turn, led to a loss of important biocorridors. In more recent
times, the reduction of agricultural activities in rural (especially hilly) areas has
contributed to the full degradation of the centuries-old appearance of the
Macedonian landscape.
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