Principles of environmental protection within conservation areas

Egor Zamotaev

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Over the last decade environmental problems have become important in the world, so the European Union established some rules and requirements for environmental protection. All the countries of the European Union should follow these rules but at the same time they have their own regulations on environmental assessment. The object of our research is to compare environmental principles within the countries, to find the most effective ones, and to determine whether the governments’ guidelines in the protected areas correspond to the declared priorities and objectives. These include environmental assessment, strategic plans, environmental legislation, and management of conservation areas within the countries of the European Union. In our research we chose four countries with similar environments and compared their ecological strategies along the above criteria. To achieve this goal, we analysed the data from the governments’, employees’, and tourists’ points of view. To do this, we used methodology which consisted of a questionnaire, several interviews, and an analysis of the research and a literature review. A sociological survey in a form of questionnaire among tourists was carried out within Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland, while the analysis of the relationship of the answers between the countries was performed in IBM SPSS Statistics 27. The interviews were held with representatives from the national parks in the examined countries, while the analysis of the literature was based on the research work in these and other national parks in the countries of interest. The data of the protected areas was analysed with ArcGis, in which all the maps were drawn. The findings of the research work were controversial: each country’s policy and legislation framework had their pros and cons. The analysis of the results from governmental and sociological points of view showed that the lowest number of ecological conflicts with the highest amount of conservation areas was in Germany, the most effective management was in Austria, the most available for the general public legislation framework was found in the Czech Republic, and the highest ecological awareness with the highest number of partnerships in the protected areas was discovered in Poland. Nevertheless, we found similarities not only in strategies but in people’s needs as well (e.g.: a lack of trash bins within the examined countries). Taking this into account, we combined the strongest points of the ecosystems’ conservation measures of all the examined countries and formulated ideas regarding which plans are better to implement in future in order to maintain ecological and socio-economic sustainability.

Keywords

environmental assessment, environmental management, environmental legislation, national parks, policy, protected areas, ecosystem conservation

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 31. 3. 2021

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Ing. Zdeněk Keken, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Environmental Sciences

Master programme / field:
Engineering Ecology / Nature Conservation