Study on Environmental Wellbeing and Its Main SocioEconomic Factors: Evidence from Romania

Abstract

Sustainability especially targets the process of reconciliation and balance among specific tendencies occurring in its economic, human, and environmental dimensions. This study intends to reveal if salient differences between the levels of each dimension are present across a punctual national context, i.e. the Romanian one, in the 2006-2020 period. It also intends to investigate the effects of economic and social sectors on the main weak points of environmental wellbeing, if these are still significant and negative or, contrary, if sustainable path could be found in these links in the same circumstances of analysis. In this way, we centered our debate on environmental performance, found its main vulnerabilities for observing, on one hand, if Romania follows different environmental paths comparatively with the other two dimensions of wellbeing and, on the other hand, the nature of the effects of society's performance (with its economic and social parts) upon it. Particularly, our study aims to respond to a practical need of research in this country, being also possible to represent a support for the policies addressing sustainable development in the Romanian context. Based on descriptive and path analyses, our results showed that, in the case of environmental wellbeing, the most vulnerable indicators are shown to be the ones regarding renewable energy and energy savings. The main susceptibilities in Romania seemed to be in respect to the relationship between (1) energy savings and safe sanitation, healthy life, population growth, public debt, employment and (2) renewable energy and healthy life, population growth, public debt. Accordingly, the two most sensitive environmental indicators were shown to be affected by these human and economic components of wellbeing, recommendations being formulated in the directions of more careful strategical actions for their improvement in such a way of not highly contributing to the degradation of the environment.

Environmental wellbeing in the context of sustainable development: Evidence from post-communist economies

“…Third, it has been shown that a high public debt constitutes a constraint on environmental wellbeing, with this negative influence confirmed in other studies (Clootens, 2017;Ulman et al, 2021a;Ulman et al, 2021b;Ulman and Cautisanu, 2022). Fourth, employment was found to be harmful to environmental wellbeing both at the general level (see Figure 3) (Ulman et al, 2021a;Ulman et al, 2021b;Ulman and Cautisanu, 2022) and also, as in our study, in terms of energy use, renewable energy, and greenhouse gases. These results follow the major concern mentioned in the study by Lawn (2009), referring to the potential conflict between environmental goals and employment.…”

“…Second, as also observed in other studies, gender equality seems to play an important role in the environment and the state of wellbeing, although its influence might not be unitarily understood (Ulman and Dobay, 2016;Vicente-Molina et al, 2018;Ulman and Dobay, 2020). Third, it has been shown that a high public debt constitutes a constraint on environmental wellbeing, with this negative influence confirmed in other studies (Clootens, 2017;Ulman et al, 2021a;Ulman et al, 2021b;Ulman and Cautisanu, 2022). Fourth, employment was found to be harmful to environmental wellbeing both at the general level (see Figure 3) (Ulman et al, 2021a;Ulman et al, 2021b;Ulman and Cautisanu, 2022) and also, as in our study, in terms of energy use, renewable energy, and greenhouse gases.…”

“…Another different result, this time positive, is related to population growth, which seems to become insignificant or positive in ways that are different from previous results, which indicate that its influence is particularly negative Ulman et al, 2021b;Ulman and Cautisanu, 2022;Zhao et al, 2020) (see EU countries, stage 1 of development, Romania).…”

“…Although other results indicated a possible relaxation with regard to the environmental impact of offering basic needs, the analysis performed on the 19 postcommunist economies argues against it, as the negative effects on the environment are still present, especially concerning the unsustainable emission of greenhouse gases, encouraging prudence in this regard. Moreover, contrary to other findings is the fact that income distribution affects energy use and greenhouse gases in the situation in which its impact was generally shown to be insignificant or positive Ulman et al, 2021a;Ulman et al, 2021b;Ulman and Cautisanu, 2022;McMichael, 2015;Collin and Collin, 2015;Baloch et al, 2018). These different findings likely arise from the specificities of the selected sample of countries, the still negative effects indicating a lack of equality, efficiency, and eco-friendly solutions adopted in the post-communist countries.…”

“…This assumes that sustainable development has the difficult task of converting the negative influences of economic and human dimensions upon the environment into positive ones, the high levels of the first ones translating into high levels of the last ones. In other words, economic development is considered to represent a pillar of environmental wellbeing, a premise for it under the condition in which the environment is already very affected, registering a low level of wellbeing and representing the most problematic dimension, as shown both in this article and also in others, including those of Ulman et al, 2021a;Ulman et al, 2021b;or Ulman and Cautisanu (2022). We intended to test this conventional assumption for a period higher than 10 years in a different specific context formed by approximately homogeneous countries, with a similar communist past.…”