Management and Environmental Protection

Supposedly, we live in an era of speed and information. We live in an era where anything we want or need to know is just one click away. And when it comes to matters like our planet, the environment, and how to protect them, being informed shouldn’t just be an option, a right, it should be a duty.

Every action we take, every used phone we throw away, every can of soda we put in the wrong place will affect the planet and, subsequently, the lives of future generations. When we have so much power to ruin the world, we should not be allowed to not know how we could also save it.

The present book, althought it cannot put together all the available information, tries to gather the minimum of it, so that it can make us understand how much harm we, as human beings, have brought to our planet, why we should stop doing it and what we should do in order to make things better.

The book is a collection of articles that have one thing in common: the protection of the environment, which they approach from different perspectives.

The first article, Strategies for sustainable development in the Western Balkan, presents, as the title itself outlines, the main aspects of sustainable development in the Balkan region, through a comparative analysis of Croatia and Macedonia.

The first chapter, Introduction, consists mainly of a definition of the concept of sustainable development, as it is seen today.

The following chapters aim at giving an insight into the sustainable strategies, first of Macedonia and then of Croatia, pointing at the key objectives and challenges of each strategy. These chapters are followed by a conclusion part, in which the main aspects discussed throughout the article are once more underlined.

The second article, entitled Environmental management during agrarian transformation and EU integration. The case of Bulgaria is a consistent and complex paper, which suggests a framework for analyzing the forms and efficiency of eco-management in agriculture.

Firstly, it defines the concept of eco-management and lists the different modes in which this appears in Bulgaria.

Furthermore, the paper presents the evolutions of these forms of eco-management during post-communist transition and EU integration of Bulgarian agriculture and analyzes the efficiency of these evolutions. Last but not least, it suggests what should be done in order to improve public policies for a more effective environmental protection.

The following paper, Global problems of mankind and their effects on Romania, gives an idea of how phenomena such as pollution, global warming and even financial crisis are approached in Romania.

A short presentation of Romania, consisting in the description of its location, history and scenery, is delivered. Afterwards, each phenomenon referred to above – global warming, pollution and financial crisis – is explained in detail and its manifestations and effects are presented, firstly on a global scale and secondly, within Romania.

The forth article, entitled Green public procurement as a driver of sustainable consumption, highlights the challenges of sustainable consumption and introduces a tool that can be a driver of sustainable consumption and production.

The paper begins with explaining what the concepts of sustainable consumption and green public procurement mean. Moreover, it underlines the main barriers that appear when trying to apply these concepts and gives solutions to overrun these barriers.

Green technologies remarkably argues why is turning to eco or green technologies the best shot we’ve got not only at saving our planet, but also at making it a better place for our children to live in.

The paper explains in detail what green technology actually means, which are the four pillars that sustain it, and what are the goals of a Green Technology Policy.

Moreover, it describes what should be done in order to adopt these green technologies and what are the long-term benefic effects that these promise to have.

The next article, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Protection in the Banking Sector, suggests a subject that has caught the attention of many during the past years. Corporate Social Responsibility is a concept that puts companies, corporate giants face to face with the urgent need of taking measures in order to protect our environment.

The paper gives an insight into the current CSR practices of the banking sector in Singapore, not without explaining first what this complex concept, known as CSR means.

The final paper, Pathways for Sustainable Development under Global Environmental Changes in the Niger - Delta Region, Nigeria, is aiming at answering two very important questions regarding the region mentioned in the title: ”Why abundant human and natural resources have had so little impact on poverty?” and ”What path leads towards sustainable human development in the region?”. Moreover, the article explores the ways for sustainable development in the Niger - Delta region of Nigeria, under global environmental changes. The study covers two states, Ondo and Delta, and utilizes both primary and secondary data, gathered through questionnaires and Focus Group Discussions (FGD).

This book should be of great value to various groups of interest engaged not only in the field of environmental management, but also in other fields, such as Mathematics, Public Relations, Marketing or Economy.