The Lower Danube Wetlands System has been and remains one of the largest and most diverse wetlands formations in Europe. It extends over ten thousands square kilometers along the lower Danube river stretch of 840 kilometers long. In the last century several types of management were applied at the LDWS and river catchments and a wide range of structural and functional effects occurred in time. The management system promoted between 1950s and late 1980s was designed according to the principles of neoclassical economic theory. The objectives of this paper are: i) the implementation of holistic approach and management for identifying the past and future drivers, pressures and impacts upon LDWS; ii) use of the methods of biological economics for the assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of past and future strategies and management of the LDWS and iii) identification of the overall goal and targets for future holistic bioeconomic management of the local (IBr), micro-regional (LDWS) and regional (LDC and North-Western Black Sea) biological complexes. As the reference state for LDWS we have adopted that of the beginning of 1960s when no major structural and functional changes had occurred. Increase in demands for more agricultural land and food production, hydropower or for waterway transport as well as for urbanization and industrial use at the Danube river catchments have resulted in significant changes. These together with a set of main actions consisting in: extensive conversion of wetlands into agroecosystems; intensification of auxiliary energy and material inputs into food production systems; point and diffuse pollution; hydrotechnical works and overexploitation of natural resources have been identified as drivers and pressures responsible for a wide range of structural and functional changes which have occurred in the last four decades in the LDWS and North-Western Black Sea. All sets of local and regional impacts are described and viewed as major threats for natural capital and long-term socioeconomic development. The crude estimation of total economic value of the remained wetlands (SIBr) and established polders in the IBr biological complex, allowed a better assessment of the short term and sectoral advantages against long term and holistic disadvantages. The achievements of such analysis described in section 4 clearly suggest the multifunctional role and economic value of self-maintaining wetlands ecosystems compared with monofunctional role and economic value of the human-dependent agroecosystems. It is determined that the economic inefficiency of the former applied mono-functional policy and management at the IBr wetlands system consists on the one hand in the huge cost of wetlands transformation (more than one billion USD) and additional cost for intensive production of crops, which accounted for at least 90 million USD per year (20 per cent higher than the crops market price of 70 million USD per year) and on the other hand in the monetary loss (173 million USD per year) due to cutting off three valuable ecosystem functions by implementing mono-functional farming system. Bearing in mind the difference between the reference and current states of LDWS and the respective economic consequences as well as the long-term objectives of the new established policy in the region, which deals, with: a) biodiversity conservation; b) 40 per cent reduction of the potential nutrient discharges into Black Sea by 2010 and c) sustainable development, we are proposing an operational plan for a holistic bioeconomic management of these wetlands. This plan is, based on the reconstruction of 1500 square kilometers of wetlands in the LDWS and implementing multifunctional farming in LDC and remaining polders in the LDWS. We have also estimated the potential impacts of wetlands reconstruction of LDWS’s functions and its total bioeconomic value.
Misunderstanding terms like ciclicity, circularity, and nonlinearity can bring about confusion and endanger a good idea, tested by industrial ecology and widely known as "dematerialization of the economy". That is why the main the objective of the present article is to clarify the concept of "circular economy" and explain its relation with the operating laws of the economic system and the new scientific breakthroughs in systemic ecology. A secondary aim is to identify the means through which the dematerialization of the economy operates, to highlight its limits, by underlining the difference between economic growth and development and waste generation. The research methodology comprises the following stages:• Identifying the problems encountered by the concept of "circular economy"• Coming up with an analysis of the "cause-effect" relationship • Identifying the main opinions about "circular economy" expressed in the literature • Assessing to what extent the idea of "circularity" in economics has been validated. The aims of this research have led to the necessity of reaching an agreement between concepts like the economy of functionality, the adaptive economy and the specializationintegration relation.
This paper focuses on the current environmental issues, more specifically the amount of greenhouse gases humanity is being confronted with at the moment. The research was carried out on a niche of the topic, namely on the carbon footprint of public buildings. The concept of a sustainable university is new and insufficiently explored, and as part of the environmental metabolism, it influences anthropic sustainability in a directly proportional manner. This indicator’s monitoring systems reveal how vulnerable humanity is in front of the latency of an unprecedented and inevitable environmental catastrophe. The ecological effects may be mitigated by the academic community through green urban design. The ecological performance can be expressed in an economically efficient manner, which can, at the same time, create a precious channel of communication within the entire academic community though volunteering for sustainability. Moreover, this research has identified several solutions for optimizing the carbon footprint, which do not hinder the necessary economic development. Within the current context, when most economic activities are leading to ecological collapse, sustainability should be reprioritized with the help of the academic society, through the examples offered by applied research. The premises of this research were represented by bibliometric analyses and the results obtained have proven its importance, as well as the importance of certain scenarios involving solutions for improving the metabolism of nature.
The dematerialization of the development of anthropized and anthropic systems/complexes represents an objective of maximum importance for ensuring the coevolution of human activities and the natural environment, from the perspective of sustainability requirements. In this context, the use of methods for analyzing the reciprocal flows between the natural environment as a system and the socioeconomic system, in physical and energetic expression, provides us with the information support necessary to adopt measures to reduce specific consumption of ecosystem goods, respectively pressure on biophysical support of socio-economic systems, regardless of the spatial scale at which they are identified. Approaches in the field of industrial ecology, but not only, have highlighted the need and possibility of material flows cycling, but this is a first step towards dematerializing the development of anthropogenic and anthropic systems/complexes. From the perspective of global performance, research is needed on cost/benefit analysis of decisions in this regard and evaluation of effects/impacts on structural and functional processes at the level of technical-productive organizations.
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