The article examines important aspects of spatial differences in three leading areas - social, economic and environmental. The main aim is to present the results of the development and approbation of an author’s methodology for assessing the existence of “inclusive regional development” – a development that does not lead to critical regional differences. The methodology is applied to assess the inclusive economic development in EU countries. Its application at a district level for Bulgaria allows to determine those of them that are the most problematic and do not meet the requirements for inclusive development in terms of economic, social and environmental dimensions. Lastly, the results of the research and analysis are summarized.
the development of societies today is inequal, and the modern approach to deal with this situation is through the idea of inclusive development. Its descriptive definition emphasises the problems of inequality, poverty, growth, employment, development and social welfare, as well as the search for instruments to measure this state in order not to be a 'mirage'. the existing approaches rely on indices to evaluate the degree of inclusion, as most of them compare economic with social and ecological results. the report aims to address the problem of measuring the inclusive development of districts in Bulgaria through the evaluation of an index of social progress. the tasks include the establishment of suitable indicators to include in the index, an evaluation of the district development in accordance with the selected indicators, ranking the districts, and evaluating inclusiveness towards the average results of the state. the results show that the districts develop socially heterogeneously and not inclusively, since not all of them demonstrate the successful satisfaction of the basic social needs of citizens, which hamper their ability to reach their full potential.
The bioeconomy is seen by the EU as an important part of the idea of achieving sustainable development that is carbon neutral and is accompanied by technological modernization and resource efficiency. For that reason, the European Commission has formed a strategy for its development, with the separate Member States having each adopted their own documentary approach towards it. The aim of the present article is to examine the resilience of the bioeconomy to the emergence of a health risk (COVID-19) by tracking the changes in production in some of its sectors. The methodology includes a case study of the bioeconomic peculiarities of two EU Member States – Bulgaria and Lithuania. The level of resilience is tested through a comparison of quantitative data. Contrary to the expectations of a slow recovery of the national economies, the main branches of the food industry show stabilitz. They can rely on their ability to meet the demand for reorientation of the participants in the agri-food chain towards local goods, which provides an opportunity for the implementation of sustainable development practices.
The bioeconomy is a concept predominantly addressing industries producing and processing biological products with the aim of making them contribute to the transformation of modern economies into more sustainable, green, circular and climate-neutral economies. The aim of the article is to study the benefits of the development of the bioeconomy in Bulgaria, seen as economic, security and climate change impacts. All of these require a balanced management of biomass application, especially for non-food purposes, in order to obtain positive impacts and avoid the degradation of the ecosystem. For these reasons, different approaches to the governance of the bioeconomy are adopted worldwide. Bioeconomic industries in Bulgaria are vulnerable to climate change, and need investment to adapt to it. The main bioindustries are agriculture and food processing with respect to value added and employment, as they are of low efficiency in comparison with EU results. These sectors show resilience in the case of health risks and need technological modernisation and efficiency improvement through new supply chains and approaches to waste management. Renewable energy generation was stable during Covid-19 lockdowns, and impacted positively the decrease in greenhouse emmissions. Along with the ecological benefits, RES increases energy diversification and contributes to national security.
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