Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Review of the Changes in the Environment and Natural Resources

Anil Markandya and Wan Jung Chou
Additional contact information
Wan Jung Chou: University of Bath

No 21/09, Department of Economics Working Papers from University of Bath, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper reviews the environmental record of the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia since the fall of the Berlin Wall, with a focus on areas of key concern to public policy at the present time. With the impacts of environment on public health being given the highest priority, we examined several associated health indicators at the national level, as well as looking at important environmental issues at the local level. In this respect, we focus on environmental problems related to air and water quality, land contamination, and solid waste management. Despite showing a highly differentiated performance across the region, the results suggest that inadequate environmental management seen in several of the transition countries in the past 20 years has put people’s health and livelihood under huge threats. Moreover, this paper looks at the development of policy responses and resources, i.e. environmental expenditures, in these countries, during the process of transiting from centrally planned economies to market-based one. Similarly, we identify various degrees of progress across the region. The findings reinforce the need for better coherence between national environmental expenditure and international environmental assistance, as well as the actual enforcement of national regulations and international agreements in those non-EU transition countries.

Keywords: transition countries; environmental issues; land; policy; environmental expenditure; water pollution; contamination; air pollution; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-tra
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/files/361977/2109.pdf Final published version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Review of the Changes in the Environment and Natural Resources (2010)
Working Paper: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Review of the Changes in the Environment and Natural Resources (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eid:wpaper:15958

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics Working Papers from University of Bath, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scholarly Communications Librarian ().