Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview General Session Author(s) Iwona Otola Czestochowa University of Technology Czestochowa Poland Title Local decelopment - The natural environment protection aspects File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract This paper analyses the goals of local development and points out the main challenges for local government in the field of natural environment protection. Conducted research aims at: (1) identifying the natural environment programme goals in gmina A, (2) analysing the financial resources indispensable to ecological investments, (3) analysing the synergy effects, which occurs when many financial instrument are used together. The base to run the researches was a small, rural local community – gmina A located on the south part of Poland. Its localization within the limits of Jura Karkowsko – Czestochowska motivates the local government to implement many ecological projects. The definition of local development means complex activity which aims to quality metamorphosis of given area. The system created by local community, allows to formulate the local development into four planes: economic, social, cultural and ecological. The subsystem elements interact each other and are characterized by external and internal feedback. Skilful management of changing configurations of material, financial, human and natural environment resources in the way, which maximise the benefits and minimise the negative results, runs to additional, joint effects – synergy effects. One of the most important fact is to answering on the question how local government influences on development and thus how its influences on standard of inhabitants’ living. The effects of the local development can be divided into three groups: economical, social and ecological. The economical effects group includes the value growth of local government assets, the rise of local government revenues, the decrease of unemployment. The main social effect is to increase the living standard. This effect is reached by building modern municipal infrastructure, improvement of work, health and living conditions, increasing access to cultural, sport, educational services. Ecological effects have a significant meaning in the development process. They are results of activities in favour of natural environment improvement by inhibition of the environment degradation processes, elimination the pollution and rational managing of natural resources (water, mineral resources). The ecological effect are also connected with ecological monitoring system development. It is obvious that the goals of local community authorities can be achieved up to available financial resources and these are usually limited. Local community authorities can make various financial obligations such as loans, credits or they can issue shares when they want to finance long term investments. Local authorities can also use non-repayable aid from European Union funds. The knowledge concerning tools and programmes of European Union can help numerous local authorities to make proper decisions and effective choices when seeking ways of financing their investments. Balancing financial measures from several different sources and in different forms will help the local authorities to minimalise the contribution of the community as well as decrease the time necessary to gather the resources and it enables larger flexibility in implementing the projects and investments. Co-operation of financial instruments can increase the number of realized projects and it can help in implementing more complex projects that could not be financed when using the community financial means only. Balancing various financial resources can result in the phenomenon of synergy.
