Wzrost gospodarczy a katastrofy naturalne w Ameryce Łacińskiej i Azji Południowo-Wschodniej

Author(s): Agnieszka Kukułka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 02/2015

The aim of the article is to examine the interrelation between the occurrence of natural disaster, as well as its types, and the economic growth of developing country in two regions: South-East Asia and Latin America. The author used the generalized method of moments. Results indicate that natural disasters may have positive impact on the economy of developing country, however the effect depends on the type of phenomena. In addition there can be observed differences between examined regions, i.e. in Latin America mainly droughts influences economic growth negatively, while in South-East Asia floods are positively correlated with economic growth.

AIR POLUTION SOURCES IN TIMIS COUNTY, ROMANIA

Author(s): Hunor Vass,Teodor Mateoc-Sîrb,Tabita Adamov,Ramona Ciolac,Nicoleta Mateoc-Sîrb / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

Environmental pollution has become one of the most debated issues of contemporaneity and a major one for the management of society.. In the past, when population density was low and natural products were used almost exclusively, not so much residue was produced. With the great scientific advances, their quantity and nature have changed fundamentally. In recent decades, the process of degradation of environmental factors on our planet has evolved more and more worryingly, the amount of pollutants reaching figures beyond imagination, a situation in which the removal of pollution is a problem to correct errors that causes it. The share of air pollution sources in an existing geographical area is determined by quantifying the annual values of atmospheric emissions and by the effects on human health and ecosystems. In order to combat pollution, it is very important to identify major sources of pollution, in order to develop and implement effective measures to monitor these sources. Some of these measures can be appropriated and imposed by the authorities through urban planning and spatial planning regulations. Following the study conducted in Timiș County, the authors identified several important sources of air pollution. The researches regarding the pollution sources of Timis county were made through the air quality monitoring system in Timiș county. It was implemented and is operated by APM Timișoara as part of the national monitoring network. Its sizing was done taking into account the number and size of pollution sources as well as their location in the county. The evolution of fixed sources of air pollution in Timiș County in recent years overlaps with the evolution of industrial units. Many companies with high pollution potential have ceased or drastically reduced their activity - petrochemicals, varnishes and paints sector, food industry, metal fabrication and machine building. This has led to a significant reduction in air emissions. Newly built industrial units are less polluting, generally use gaseous fuels and are equipped where necessary with gas collection / treatment systems before being released into the atmosphere. They are also generally grouped and located in industrial parks, away from sensitive residential areas. Environmental pollution has managed to become a famous more important issue of contemporaneity and one of the primary ordinances for political decisions. Man and the environment are inseparable people, so that there are environmental dependencies, and the quality of environmental factors (air, water, soil) can change, following the necessary activations carried out by all, the care determined by the occurrence of pollution. In recent decades, it is possible that a long-term environmental factor will degrade in plans that have evolved more and more worryingly, with the amount of pollution reaching the figure that depends on any image. Stopping pollution is a problem of correcting the errors that cause it. In this article, the authors present the main sources of air pollution in Timis County, which have a negative effect on the environment and present a danger to the health of the population. The main forms of air pollution are presented, represented graphically over a period of 11 years, and at the end we will talk a little about what should be done to protect our environment, how to limit pollutant emissions, and take care of rural and urban areas. Slowly, difficultly but inevitably, air pollution as a global problem must be addressed on a global scale and hopefully resolved. This cannot be done without joint efforts by developed countries. There is a consensus today, still fragile, that without the assistance of developed countries, the world of the least favored will not be able to protect the environment but will exacerbate its deterioration

Social Perceptions of Conventional Versus Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Slovakia

Author(s): Erika Loučanová,Martina Nosálová / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The aim of the paper is detecting the attitudes of society in Slovakia towards conventional and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). A modified methodological approach of Kano model was used for tracking the object under examination on a random set of 275 individuals from Slovakia. The stated hypothesis was that conventional medicine is preferred to complementary and alternative medicine. The results confirmed the society in Slovakia prefers conventional medicine to complementary and alternative in case of diseases. Complementary and alternative medicine is more used to reduce the symptoms associated with a disease or eliminate the side effects of conventional medicine

Arrangements, Semiotic Links and Evaluations: Purifying the Familiar Environments from COVID-19 Among Serbia’s Young Professionals

Author(s): Stefan S. Janković,Milica Resanović / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Zarządzanie środowiskiem przyrodniczym w perspektywie public governance

Author(s): Violetta Korporowicz-Żmichowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

Natural environmental management is the activity of society, organisations, and individuals, aimed at limiting unfavourable changes in eco-systems. This management is the process of making and implementing decisions, regarding the state of the environment. Moreover, it is a practical activity, aimed at maintaining and improving the condition of the natural environment, which is being degraded as a result of the economic and living activities of man. Environmental management must be consistent with the state's ecological policy, which is a deliberate and conscious set of activities of state authorities. The purpose behind this policy is to ensure ecological safety for all citizens. Environmental policy is about top-down decisions, plans that are created to improve the common good, which is the environment. This improvement concerns the environment and its quality, which is not only a ‘private good’. It is also a public good, as it is of particular importance for the functioning of a given society. Some of the problems related to environmental protection, can be solved by implementing new organisational solutions, treated as a social process. We are talking about the idea of ‘public governance’, which is a bottom-up approach to management in the public sphere, including environmental management. ‘Public governance’ or ‘participatory public management’ is a type of management that is characterised by: stakeholder involvement, transparency of decisions, equality, and the lack of exclusion of individual members or groups of society, from the possibility of deciding on the shape of public services. An example here may be civic budgets, which enable local communities to co-decide on the implementation of investments, financed from a part of the local government budget. The aim of the article, meanwhile, is to present ‘public governance’ - one of the concepts of management in the public sector, and to try to answer whether the concept of public governance can be used in managing the natural environment.

Od Refadkcji

Author(s): Ryszard F. Sadowski,Janusz Uchmański / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

Man’s Attitude Towards Nature and Animal Respect Questionnaire (AniRe-Que)

Author(s): Ján Kaliský,Lada Kaliská / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

The psychometric properties of the author´s original tool named Questionnaire of the Relations between a Man and Animals (further on AniRe-Que) was constructed to assess the relations between a man and animals as natural beings; calculated in the form of an R-score (R as respect). The questionnaire is based on the theoretical outcomes of an egalitarian zoocentric, ecoethical position attributing moral statues to all beings, and measures the level of respect expression to nonhuman beings. The aim of this study was to verify its validity and reliability in a research sample of future primary and secondary teachers (N = 500, 62% of females, Mage=22.3; SD=4.1) at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. Various statistical procedures were used to verify its construct validity (exploratory factor analysis /EFA/) and its convergent/discriminating character, criterion validity, and reliability (test-retest, parallel-forms, internal consistency) to establish satisfactory psychometric properties for the AniRe-Que questionnaire. The questionnaire has possible usage for the animal relation estimation by researchers, practitioners and teachers´ ethical and environmental education intervention effectivitiveness, and also as a form of future international cooperation and verification based on this new instrument.

Environmental Protection in Strategic Instruments of Spatial Policy in Poland

Author(s): Maciej J. Nowak / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

Ensuring environmental protection requires the use of various instruments, including spatial policy ones. Appropriate integration of environmental issues in spatial policy is still a major challenge. The aim of this article is to determine the direction of optimal environmental protection in strategic tools of spatial policy. The article indicates optimal expectations for spatial policy instruments, from an environmental perspective. Then, it verifies the extent to which these expectations are, or can be, included in the current system. The research part verifies studies of conditions and directions of spatial development of voivode cities, in terms of using key elements from an environmental perspective. The analyses and research show that, especially in strategic instruments at the local level, consideration should be given to determining the importance of protected areas in shaping the environment, indicating potential solutions to environmental threats, and the social context of environmental protection. However, attempts at such activities are undertaken, largely, to a very limited extent.

Disturbances in the Mechanism of Apoptosis as One of the Causes of the Development of Cancer Diseases

Author(s): Paweł Rusin,Karolina Jabłońska / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

Apoptosis is a genetically programmed process that affects all multicellular organisms. This mechanism of programmed cell death is designed to protect the body against uncontrolled proliferation of cells with impaired functions. Apoptosis can occur through two major pathways. The extrinsic, initiated by signals from the death receptor, and the intrinsic one, resulting from a change in the permeability of the external mitochondrial membrane due to stress factors promoting the initiation of programmed cell death. Apoptosis may be influenced by many factors that may lead to suppressing the initiation of apoptotic pathways, and the damaged cell will develop, divide, and over time transform into a cancerous cell. As a result, cancer cells will be resistant to the applied chemo- and radiotherapy. The mechanisms responsible for apoptosis regulation are impaired, what eliminates the effects of therapies aimed at initiating this type of cell death. New types of molecular therapies provide an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of anticancer treatment, aiming at deficient proteins and suppressing or eliminating their antiapoptotic effects.

Contribution to the Study of the European Ground Squirrel’s population (Spermophilus citellus Linnaeus, 1766) in Rila National Park, Bulgaria

Author(s): Emanuil Mitrevichin,Lidia Sakelarieva / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

Although there are still some large and stable populations of the European Ground Squirrel, there has been a serious decline in the number and density of most of the species populations throughout its range, including in Bulgaria. The aim of the study is to supplement the scientific data about the population of the European Ground Squirrel and its habitat in Rila National Park, Southwestern Bulgaria. The research was carried out in 2017-2019 in two study areas, each divided into 20 (21) transects (every 100 m long and 5 m wide). The results have shown that the relative population density based on the number of holes tends to decrease in the period of study. The most likely reason for this, and the most significant identified threat to the population of the species in the research area in general, is the observed deterioration of the habitat status.

The contribution of ecology to science

Author(s): Bernard Hałaczek / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

This article is an analysis of the creative function of ecology in terms of knowledge. That is why the ecology asks “howshould be”. In this way, it faces a true human problem.

Ecophilosophy and the natural environment

Author(s): Zbigniew Hull / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

The philosophy of systemic sozology presented in this work has as its characteristic originality under two aspects: metaobjective and objective. In the metaobjective aspect, here called the philosophy of sozology, one should underline the following elements: the elaboration of the notion - environment, the determining of the contents of the expression: social-natural environment, the elaboration of the definition of systemic sozology, the definition of the object of research of this discipline of science, the presentation of the structure, and especially the underlining of the importance of: interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, systematics and globalism in the methodology of systemic sozology. In the objective or essential aspect the originality of the work is the underlining of the basic issues of systemic sozology and the presentation of them in six spheres, in which the process of life is realized, that it: the state of the social-natural environment, the sources of endangerment and pollution of the environment, the influence of the changing environment to life on Earth, the ways and means of protecting the environment.

Panorama of the sustainable development civilization

Author(s): Antoni Skowroński / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

The article is about the conception of sustainable development settled in the context of cultural and civilization changes. It can be taken as an alternative to further civilization development and a new panorama, opening up perspectives for the further sustainable development of civilization. The conception is a global strategy of development. It relies on the including of the natural environment into the social and economic development of a region, country or, from a global perspective, of the whole world. It assumes a long-lasting improvement of the quality of life of the present and future generations which is integrally associated with environmental improvement. It also shows the necessity of the spiritual growth and changes of the material aims of the development into immaterial ones. In all these aims and assumptions, there are a lot of practical and mental problems in the sphere of sustainable development which retard and even make it impossible to put these conceptions effectively into life.

An attempt to set limits on human interference in the environment

Author(s): Michał Latawiec / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

In this article, the author discusses the problem of crossing the boundaries of human intervention in the environment that affect both nature and man. Setting limits on human interference in nature (and in man themselves) is dependent on the type of boundaries. For this reason, the author presents the issues of the role and development of human interference in nature, an attempt to justify the current intervention as well as the associated dilemmas. For the purpose of this analysis, the author formulates a definition of borderline interference in nature. Finally, the author gives examples of exceeding the permissible limits.

Axiological principles of integrated protection of human and natural environments

Author(s): Wojciech Bołoz / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

Over the last few decades, we have witnessed a significant change in human mentality and attitudes towards the natural environment and its protection. This change is accompanied by different axiological principles within which we can distinguish: 1) the anthropocentric concept which places man in the centre and grants him a privileged place amongst other species; 2) the anti-anthropocentric concept which stresses the equality of all species and demands a reversal in humanistic orientation consolidated by the European Enlightenment; 3) the moderate anthropocentric concept which underlines human’s caring and a responsible role towards the ecosystem. As disturbances of ecological balance are the result of human actions and the sign of the cultural crisis, the necessity to protect the natural environment should be realised. John Paul II was a supporter of the above. He referred to the integrated ecology, which combines the protection of the natural environment with the concern of the quality of human spirituality. Integrated ecology poses two demands: 1) all actions towards environmental protection should be understood as means of confirming the respect of human personal dignity; 2) those actions which harm the natural environment and threaten man should be given up.

Environmental vices as ethical and anthropological roots of the environmental crisis

Author(s): Dominika Dzwonkowska / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

The root of environmental crisis is not only the failure to recognize the intrinsic value of the non-human world, but it can also be perceived as a failure in moral excellence and in the cultivation of virtue. The word “virtue” is an old-fashioned one, representing tradition and today we mostly associate it with academic discussion. However, the term is not only connected with traditional ethical reflection; nowadays, we can witness a revival of virtue discourse in environmental ethics, namely in environmental virtue ethics. The paper analyses the problem of cardinal virtue and vice, and tries to answer which vices are the most responsible for the environmental crisis. Thus the five crucial environmental vices are defined as egoism, greed, arrogance, ignorance and apathy.

From the ethology of animals to the human ecology

Author(s): Zbigniew Łepko / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2020

The title “From the ethology of animals to human ecology” acknowledges both the theories of evolution developed in numerous scientific fields of science, and the academic achievements of Konrad Lorenz and his partners, the development of which are shown through the order of studies they published, from the scope of classical ethology and the row of humanities, to philosophy and human ecology. Lorenz conducted an ethological examination of human culture, thereby uncovering its biological bases, its dynamics, social pathologies and means for overcoming them. Thanks to this Lorenz gained an insight into the character of the crisis of contemporary civilization, described and diagnosed it, presented the causes and proposed a cure. Lorenz recommended mobilizing efforts to create an ecological ethos for those surviving on Earth. Today it isn’t possible to predict the future of Homo sapiens on our planet, however, it is our duty to prepare for our struggle to survive. It is not only about survival but also about the preservation of the human way of life. This is a matter of biological and spiritual survival. Therefore, Lorenz’s ethological humanism takes on the mantle of a new ‘evolutionary humanism’.

Społeczna konstrukcja praw zwierząt na przykładzie kampanii „Zostań Wege na 30 dni”

Author(s): Joanna Jaczewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2021

Classical explanations of the genesis of social values and norms refer to mechanisms that more or less directly facilitate the development of human societies. However, the explanation of moral norms pertaining to other species remains a riddle. The main theoretical idea of the article is to extend the catalog of ways in which norms emerge (according to Hans Joas’ classification). The article investigates the strategies of animal rights construction within pro-animal discourse using the techniques of structure and content analysis. The analyzed material was derived from the ‘Become Vegan/Vegetarian for 30 Days’ social campaign, whose main goal has been to motivate people to give a plant-based diet a try. Based on the analysis, four main strategies of attitude-change towards non-human species have been identified: a) the redefinition of animal status; b) the redefinition of human action; c) the redefinition of eating animals; and d) the signaling of positive consequences of animal rights implementation.

Discourses about the meaning of the local food Investigations in Romanian urban contexts

Author(s): Laura Nistor / Language(s): English Issue: Spec 3/2015

Abstract Up to now only a few studies about local food consumption in Romania have been realized and the majority of them are quantitative investigations. The aim of the present research which is based on focus group interviews was to bring further nuance to these previous quantitative data by asking the respondents to develop deeper narratives about what local food means to them, how they relate to local foods, how they perceive the different features of local foods (e.g. tradition, organic, taste, ingredients, etc.) and which are their motivations and impediments in connection with local food consumption. The research showed that consumers’ involvement with local food occurs along product-based aspects, i.e. the intrinsic characteristics of food (taste, ingredients) and local food consumption seems to be much more motivated by health concerns and status assignment than by ethical and ecological reasons. Two major definitions of local food were mapped: 1) a place-centred, geographical definition and 2) a production-centred, ‘how it is made’ kind of definition.

Work–life: balance? Tensions between care and paid work in the lives of Hungarian women

Author(s): Anikó Gregor,Eszter Kováts / Language(s): English Issue: Spec 7/2019

Based on theories of the relations of labor and care, as well as previous research on the past 30 years of gender inequalities in Hungary, the paper aims to interpret these results and further develop the existing knowledge on the situation of women and gender relations in Hungarian society in the context of the social, economic, and political transformations of the past 30 years while considering the intersecting mechanisms of employment, family and care policies from a gender perspective. In 2017 we conducted six focus group interviews with lower-class women across the country and a representative survey on a sample of 1,000 respondents (both men and women), that will provide the empirical data for the paper. One of the core findings of the research is the striking tension that women experience on the labor market in relation to their care responsibilities incl. elderly care, especially in low-income and working-class groups. The counter-interest of the employers concerning care for dependent family members was a recurrent topic brought up by the participants of our interviews as well as the lack of expectations towards state support and towards men in the share of care work.