Klaipėdos universitetas

The research focuses on evaluation of the Blue Flag programme implementation in Latvia since the year 1998, when the programme’s operations started. It includes analysis and an overview of both the national and local level impacts and the results of the programme implementation. With regard to national level, approach and experience, the overview focuses on effectiveness and the role of the Blue Flag programme as a supporting instrument for successful implementation of environmental legislation. This programme is also analysed as a communication instrument in promoting environmental policies within 500 km long of coastline areas, which in Latvia are announced the national interest territories aiming at both particular protection and also development, especially, as tourism destinations. On the municipal level, our approach and overview present analysis of the Blue Flag criteria and their implementation experience in different municipalities. Moreover, we study the overall impact of the programme on environmental performance of the municipal sector regarding coastal protection issues. The Blue Flag survey also reviews selected municipal case studies: Liepaja, Ventspils, and Saulkrasti. After reviewing the overall programme’s performance in Latvia, the study concludes with an elaborated set of multi-level suggestions on potential improvements that would strengthen the programme’s further implementation and facilitate better and wider use of its potential not only for particular designated and size limited coastal destinations as the Blue Flag beaches and marinas. The programme’s potential could also be used for voluntary and facilitated coastal governance and coastal communication within the whole municipality and eventually further afield, turning from spreading of coastal information and almost established education towards coastal participation and the whole scale pro-environmental behaviour.

This paper contains a pilot study on coastal values and potential means of determining and characterising them in the terms of coastal planning and management. The research case study took place in the coastal region of North East Latvia – in the municipality of Salacgriva. The municipality coast is very diverse: coastal access, landscape and the whole biogeography is changing very much along the whole 54 km, being also rich in various natural and cultural heritage assets. Such great coastal variety in the limits of one administrative territory does require very selective governance approaches and dynamic management to be realized by local administration, which has very limited necessary capacities of all type, alike other rural coastal municipalities in Latvia. Also, there is very limited coastal information as well as assessment/interpretation capacities. All this requires mandatory development of municipal coastal monitoring and information/science-policy interface, to be based on general System Analysis Framework (SAF) application, first, on social-ecological system approach, and, second, including necessary developments of stakeholder participation and bottom-up governance approaches and, at the first, developing of the public monitoring (citizen science approach, e.g., Eco schools alike public representatives, etc.) capacities and methodologies. There has been developed an initial proposal for a new and multi-thematic coastal core area monitoring and governance tool. Coastal resources were assessed using a coastal value-based prioritisation tool, which generates knowledge of the mutual connection among various social-ecological resources/assets along the shore. During the study, data was collected along the municipal coastline taking into account the elements characterising the beach and shoreline landscape, as well as the distribution of invasive plant species, algae and plants washed up by the sea, as well as waste created by people along the coast. This data was subsequently collated, described, and combined with separate conclusions made based on beach visitors’ interviews that were conducted along the entire Latvian coast as well as interviews of the Salacgriva municipality’s main stakeholder groups. Information was also obtained from the analysis of documents seeking to facilitate development of a multi-thematic coastal value prioritisation tool and to distinguish coastal management priorities that can be set as proposals to coastal governments for developing a sustainable and more integrated coastal management background.

Darnaus vystymosi idėjų ir principų taikymas šių dienų plėtros procesuose, be abejo, yra populiari, diskutuotina pastarųjų metųmokslinė tema. Vis dėlto tai nepadeda atskleisti kai kurių darnaus vystymosi tyrimo problemų, nenusako to, kaip darnus vystymasisįvertinamas tam tikruose etapuose ir kaip išskiriami rodikliai, padedantys apskaičiuoti procesą. Šio straipsnio tikslas – pateikti metodologiją,kaip, autoriaus nuomone, būtų galima išskirti rodiklius, kurie tiktų vertinti įvairių procesų darną. Straipsnyje aptariamiįvairių procesų vystymosi veiksniai, aplinkos būklės saugumo kriterijai, apimantys skirtingas sritis.

Importance of sustainable coastal governance also in the Baltic sea region has been widely recognised and since such governance has to have integrative nature that requires horizontal cross-sectorial integration as well as involvement of all governance levels and subsequently organisation of vertical integration among the levels. Besides some succesfull local cases around Europe, mainly special outside projects based, there is to be recognized that the municipal integrated sustainable coastal governance has not been yet neither well and widely locally developed in practice nor sufficiently researched field in order to permit necessary design of adequate policy innovations. Practical development and local realisation of the municipal integrated coastal governance often encounters obstacles of the basic nature, e.g. because there are not sufficiently understood and applied cross- and trans-disciplinary approaches – studies and governance of the coastal territories as the complex social-ecological systems (SES). For understanding the process and structure of coastal governance, application of system thinking and system dynamics methods are to be emphasized as well. The paper demonstrates adaptation of coastal nature studies based System Analysis Framework (SAF) methodology for its application to coastal governance studies and general municipal governance system adjusting and upgrading towards coastal issues, what could be seen as the new step for SAF further planned developments. As the part of the EU BONUS programme BaltCoast project, the authors performed, including main stakeholders participation elements, the issue identification step, system definition and also a conceptual model building steps of the SAF methodology application in the particular, local governance innovations rich, case study territory – Salacgriva municipality in Latvia. Coastal governance problems in Latvia are especially relevant for rural coastal municipalities with limited administrative capacities and long and low populated coastline territories. The next SAF application steps will include development of coastal governance system scenarios using a systems modelling tool and the design and testing of complementary set of governance instruments as science-policy interface, that shall support sustainable use of coastal resources in the interests of coastal nature and culture protection, and local socio-economic development.

Aplinkosaugos vadybos sistemos ISO 14001 ir EMAS yra įmonių brandos ženklas, kai jos nusprendžia parodyti, kad stengiasi būti kuo draugiškesnės aplinkai ir taip gerina į vartotojus nukreiptą savo įvaizdį. Straipsnyje kalba apie tai, kad šios sistemos suteikia ir daugiau privalumų, tokių kaip konkurencinis pranašumas, rizikos, susijusios su aplinkos tarša, mažinimas, veiksmingesnis vidinių operacijų sekimas bei kaštų mažinimas veiksmingiau naudojant išteklius. Be išvardytų privalumų, įmonės gali patirti ir sunkumų, tokių kaip diegiant sistemą padidėjusios sąnaudos, motyvacijos, žinių bei įgūdžių trūkumas. Esminis dalykas, norint, kad aplinkosaugos vadybos sistemos įdiegimas įmonėje būtų naudingas aplinkai, ekonomikai bei rinkai, patartina įdiegus sistemą toliau stebėti įmonės procesus, pažangą ir toliau ieškoti būdų, kaip būtų galima tobulinti procesus, remiantis aplinkosaugos vadybos sistema. Tad aplinkosaugos vadybos sistemų poveikis įmonių tarptautinei veiklai pasireiškia įmonės įvaizdžio gerinimu. Norint, kad įdiegta sistema teiktų daugiau privalumų, patartina nuolat prižiūrėti ir tobulinti aplinkosaugos vadybos sistemų veikimą. Straipsnio autorė siekia nustatyti aplinkosaugos vadybos sistemų diegimo poveikį įmonių tarptautinei veiklai. Duomenims apdoroti taikyti tokie kokybiniai metodai, kaip mokslinių straipsnių ir knygų analizė, sintezė ir sisteminimas.

Straipsnyje analizuojami darnaus vystymosi įgūdžiai ugdymo įstaigose. Atliktas ugdymo įstaigų veiklų ekspertinis ir poveikio aplinkai vertinimas, taikant ekologinio pėdsako metodą. Skatinant ugdymo įstaigų bendruomenes domėtis aplinkos apsauga ir ugdyti darnaus vystymosi įgūdžius, nuo 2015 metų vykdoma Darnios mokyklos programa, kur dalyvauja įvairių lygių Lietuvos ugdymo įstaigos (nuo ikimokyklinio, bendrojo, profesinio lavinimo iki neformaliojo ugdymo) ir joje dirbantys (besimokantys) bendruomenės nariai. Darnaus vystymosi įgūdžiai analizuoti, įgyvendinant naujas praktines veiklas, kurios mažino ugdymo įstaigų ekologinį pėdsaką. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad aktyviausios bendruomenės buvo tos, kurios į veiklas įtraukė daugiau dalyvių ir socialinių partnerių. Darnaus vystymosi įgūdžių formavimo procesas sudarė sąlygas į aplinkosauginio ugdymo veiklas įtraukti įvairaus amžiaus ir grupių žmones. Vykdytos aplinkosauginės priemonės bendruomenėms padėjo aktyviau dalyvauti vykdant aplinkosauginius projektus ir suprasti poveikio aplinkai pasekmes. Dalyviai atsakingiau vertino aplinką ir stengėsi labiau tausoti išteklius.

Climate change adaptation being one of today’s main challenges on global agenda do affect people worldwide, but even though most decisions regarding climate change governance are made at the international or national level, the implementation of these decisions in most cases takes place at the local level. Municipal climate change adaptation research project in Latvia was carried out with special emphases on main stakeholder understanding, preparedness and communication factors using several complementary research methods – case study research in Salacgriva coastal municipality, sociological surveys with both Salacgriva town households / inhabitants (home visits / questionnaires) and also nation-wide municipal planners/ specialists survey (web based) in Latvia, as well as complementary interviews with various national agencies governance level experts. The comprehention and level of understanding of all sectors and necessary elements of complex municipal climate change governance development in Latvia is not sufficiently high neither for municipal planners/specialists nor for municipal (flood endangered) households, according to the needs of both those groups. There is in Latvia diverse and wide list of separately developed and already available instrument groups for municipal climate change governance (MCCG), especially, complementary communication instruments, as well as suffient enough number of insturments are in possession of the any particular municipality, but usage of them is quite limited by their type and range, and not complementary. Necessary is to change municipal project type thinking-working towards comprehensive planning / programming municipal development / support and pro-active communication and collaboration.

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos jūrų žuvininkystės sektoriaus, kaip regioninio verslo, problemos ir perspektyvos. Įvertinta jūrų žuvininkystės sektoriaus būklė, problemos ir numatytos galimos perspektyvos. Straipsnyje apibendrinta informacija, pateikta žuvininkystės sektoriaus norminiuose aktuose ir dokumentuose, statistinė informacija, moksliniai straipsniai bei informacija iš įvairių seminarų. Pateikta siūlymų galimoms perspektyvoms įgyvendinti.

There are 33 rural, 18 semi-rural and 9 urban municipalities in Lithuania according to three criterias: 1) part of population living in rural areas; 2) population density and 3) distance of municipality from large towns/cities. Šilutė district municipality together with Rusnė ward has been studied in detail to search the main problems of sustainable development of these rural territories of Klaipėda region. System analysis approach and method of integrated sustainability index were applied with suplement of social inquiry fulfiled in Rusnė ward. The indices selected for calculations and comparison of rural and semi-rural municipalities, including Šilutė district, were social, economic and environmental: for Šilutė 4 different indices in each group were selected, for Rusnė ward – 3 indices. The integrated sustainability index was calculated for all rural municipalities of Lithuania and Rusnė ward. The research period for Šilutė and other municipalities was 2006-2012, and for Rusnė ward 2008-2012. Research has revealed that the main problems with sustainability in the studied territories are of social character. According to the Integrated sustainability index, Šilutė district municipality was somehow lower than other rural municipalities of Lithuania, and even in Rusnė ward this index was a little higher during 2011–2012, than in Šilutė district municipality.K