Acta Technica Corviniensis

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ACTA TECHNICA CORVINIENSIS – BULLETIN of ENGINEERINGCarpathian region – created the first crossculturalbiodiversity and social-economicassessment of the Carpathians. The Danube-Carpathian Summit organised by the RomanianGovernment and WWF in Bucharest in April2001 led to the development and signing of theConvention on the Protection and SustainableDevelopment of the Carpathians (CarpathianConvention) in Kyiv in May 2003 and came intoforce in January 2006. The CarpathianConvention Interim Secretariat is presentlyhosted by the UNEP Regional Office for Europefrom Vienna, Austria. The first two Conferencesof the Parties were organized in 2006 and 2008.It is expected that at the third Conferencedecisions will be made on the future permanentlocation of the Secretariat.The Carpathian Convention is a frameworkconvention and the first significant political stepensuring environmental protection and socioeconomicdevelopment in the CarpathianMountains. Efforts are now underway to give theConvention more legislative power through aseries of protocols. The Convention obligates thesignatories to enhance their efforts to achievesustainable development of the CarpathianMountains through a wide range of sectorrelatedactivities, such as biodiversity,agriculture, forestry, water management, energyand transport. The Carpathian Network ofProtected Area (CNPA) has been established aspart of the Carpathian Convention and isconsidered as one of the key contributors to theimplementation of the Convention(www.carpathianparks.org)European Union policies are a major factor,both positive and negative, on sustainabledevelopment and conservation in theCarpathian Mountains. Closer integration intothe EU’s Common Market and some EU policiesand funding are leading to the intensification ofa number of threats to the natural values andlong-term sustainability of the Carpathians,including development of mass tourism facilities(e.g. ski resorts), transportation infrastructure,and agricultural intensification as well asabandonment of traditionally farmed areas.At the same time, however, increasing EUintegration is also driving forward adoption andimplementation of a number of progressive EUlaws and policies. Even Ukraine, which thus farhas not been presented with the perspective offuture membership in the European Union, hasbeen aligning its national laws and policies toimportant pieces of EU legislation. This presentspotentially powerful tools for natureconservation and sustainable development,including the Water Framework Directive andthe Habitats and Birds Directives. Legislation forassessing and limiting negative impacts on theenvironment, e.g. the Environmental Impact andStrategic Environmental Assessments (EIAs,SEAs) are also providing supportive policyenvironments for sustainable development.At the same time, recent reforms to EU fundingprogrammes have made significant newopportunities available for financing natureconservation and sustainable development.Within the framework of the EU’s CommonAgricultural Policy for the next financing periodof 2007-13, the new European Agricultural Fundfor Rural Development (EAFRD) providesopportunities for supporting agri-environmentalmeasures as well as measures contributingdirectly to implementation of the Natura 2000network of specially protected areas. The EU’srevised regional development regulations willprovide significant new opportunities within theStructural and Cohesion Funds for supportinginstitutional development, training andinfrastructure related to conservation andsustainable development.To this day, most people in the Carpathians stillmake their living through farming. A largemajority of this farming remains small in scale,labour intensive and with low inputs relying ontraditional practices. The most far-reachingthreat with potential wide-rangingenvironmental, social and economic impacts inthe Carpathians is the intensification ofagriculture. To a large extent, the most fortunateresult of the policy of collectivization during thecommunist regime was that many areas andlandscapes of the Carpathians remainedtraditionally managed or completelyundeveloped, making room for a significantlevel of biological diversity. These areas are nowextremely vulnerable to efficient land clearingprocesses that accompany intensive agriculture.SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTThe Carpathians are home to numerousnationalities and ethnic groups that are boundtogether by the highland lifestyle and manyyears of mixing and integration between the162008/ACTA TECHNICA CORVINIENSIS/Tome I
ACTA TECHNICA CORVINIENSIS – BULLETIN of ENGINEERINGgroups. Culturally, the Carpathians are steepedin age-old traditions and marked by peopleswho have shared climate, hardships and a senseof isolation.The people of the Carpathians have made theirliving by grazing on mountain pastures andcultivating fields in river valleys for generations.Historically, mountain shepherding has beenone of the most important elements ofCarpathian culture. Shepherds and their flockscan still be encountered in the CarpathianMountains of Poland and Slovakia, and arecommon in the mountainous areas of Ukraineand Romania.Much of the Carpathians escaped agriculturalcollectivization under Communism thanks totheir relatively poor value for agriculture. As aresult, private ownership remained the rulerather than the exception across much of theregion. Agriculture went into a tailspin n theearly 1990s following the fall of Communistregimes and the move to a more free-marketsystem. The removal of agricultural subsidies,introduction of competition through freemarket reforms and resulting recession in theCarpathian countries has caused a significantdecline in agricultural employment and ruralincomes. The result has been the depopulationof rural areas, emigration of younger people insearch of work, and consequent aging of thepopulation remaining in rural areas. Traditionalforms of land use and lifestyles are being lost,with important consequences for biodiversity,including e.g. flowering meadow ecosystems, aswell as the continuity of cultural traditions andrural communities.Restitution and privatisation of forest areas hasbecome a major challenge for conservation inthe Carpathians. Forest land which wasnationalised by the Communist regimes after1945 has been steadily handed back to itsprevious owners. This process has beencompleted in Slovakia, Czech Republic andPoland, and is currently underway in Romania,but is not planned in Ukraine where most of theformer owners are dead and relevantdocuments are lost. Either of necessity orinterest, many of the new land and forestowners have put short-term over long-term gain,and are either over-exploiting their newresources or selling them off with little regard forexisting legislation governing the use andsustainability of these resources. As a result, landand forest restitution has led to the rapiddeterioration of land and forest resources thatuntil recently has been relatively well managedor even protected. Indeed, the side effects ofrestituting land and forest resources pose amajor threat to many protected areas in theCarpathian Ecoregion.Alternative activities enabling sustainablelivelihoods in the Carpathian Mountains forexample through ‘green’ businesses like ecotourism,organic farming and water bottling arein progress but are still not developed enough topresent a clear and attractive alternative. What isclear, however, is that the agricultural andforestry sector remains a vital part of life in theCarpathians and can provide a secure andprofitable basis for the regional economy.The key challenge for people, communities aswell as biodiversity and natural resources of theregion is to find a sustainable path fordevelopment, one which secures improvedquality of life while holding onto the prodigiousnatural, cultural and social wealth of the region.In many ways, the Carpathian Ecoregion standsat a crossroads between long-term sustainabledevelopment on the one hand; and followingthe unsustainable path already experience bymany other parts of Europe and the world,including the gradual erosion of its biologicalwealth, on the other.EXISTING PROTECTED AREAS – THE MOSTIMPORTANT TOOL FOR MAINTAINING THEFEATURES OF THE CARPATHIANSProtected areas are, or should be on of the mostefficient ways to maintain the exceptionalbiodiversity and landscape values of theCarpathian Mountains. Currently there are 285protected areas (see map above) in theCarpathians, covering 13% 1 of the region, withthe northwest of the Carpathians moreeffectively covered and managed than thesoutheast part.In the new EU member states (CZ, HU, PL, SKand RO), the designation of PAs according to theEU Habitat and Bird Directives, as part of theNatura 2000 network and CBD is quite advanced,but still not sufficient. In Romania, thedesignation process is being continued now withthe designation of future Natura 2000 sites and1 PROTECTED AREAS LARGER THAN 1000 HA2008/ACTA TECHNICA CORVINIENSIS/Tome I 17
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Acta Technica Corviniensis

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