Košická bezpečnostná revue (Jun 2020)
Resource efficiency as a precondition for securing environmental sustainability by the Visegrad Countries
Abstract
Sustainable development constitutes one of the priorities of the European Union for both the 2nd decade of the 21st century and the one to come. Environmental sustainability requires much higher resource efficiency. The Visegrad Group countries which joined the EU in 2004 are obliged to meet the targets underlined in Europe 2020 Strategy. However, their past adversely affected their socio-economic development. The main aim of the article is to diagnose and evaluate the environmental performance in regard to resource efficiency in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary against the background of the EU. The comparative analysis included the following elements: domestic material consumption per capita, greenhouse gas emissions per capita, share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption, generation of waste excluding major, recycling rate of municipal waste, recycling rate of e-waste, eco-innovation index, as well as total environmental tax revenues as a share of total revenues from taxes and social contributions and environmental tax revenues as % GDP. The conducted research confirmed the hypothesis according to which the environmetal performance of the Visegrad Group economies has not been sufficient, though some progress has been noted since 2010. The analysed countries ought to focus more on environmental aspects in order to achieve a higher level of sustainability of development, and in particular of resource efficiency.
