Western support for cleaner production in central and eastern European industry

Abstract

This paper advocates a greater emphasis on preventive environmental measures when supporting CEE industry. Experience from projects carried out so far show that cleaner production deserves a high priority. The implementation of good housekeeping measures, at no or low cost, have brought about reductions of pollution and resource use in the order of 15–25%, thereby also improving production efficiency. Despite the cost effectiveness and other apparent advantages of a cleaner production strategy the Western actors are slow to grasp this opportunity. CEE industry, on the other hand, has unrealistic hopes for direct financial support for new technology and are less interested in gradual improvements of their process efficiency by a combination of technical and managerial measures. The introduction of preventive environmental strategies at an early stage of the reconstruction of CEE industry could be seen as a competitive advantage in the long run.

An intelligent environmental plan for sustainable regionalisation policies: The case of Ukraine

“…In brief, the methodological contribution of this paper is to enrich the range of environmental science and policy methods, providing fertile grounds for sustainable growth optimisation based on a contemporary central government funding policy for CEE countries. The study's impact is also particularly important for current centralised environmental planning policies, where lack of regional coordination is prominent (Schmidt et al, 2018;Schmidt, 2013;Rodhe & Strahl, 1995).…”

“…Similarly, other studies shift the focus from the centralisation to the localisation of environmental development(Mykhnenko & Swain, 2010;Pike et al, 2017). Finally, other core-periphery models byRauscher (2009) and Catalano et al (2016) investigate regionalisation through the lens of environmental pollution and its impact on the economy.…”