The Sustainable Development of România

Introduction

The concept of sustainable development has emerged in the seventies due to the general concern about the global environment, as a result of pollution and an increasing usage of sources for raw materials and energy. Sustainability means the rearrangement of technological, scientific, environmental, economic and social resources in such a way that the resulting heterogeneous system can be maintained in a state of temporal and spatial equilibrium, while a sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

I. Romania, in transition

Romania, like the other Central and East European countries, is undergoing a stressful and often painful process of radical change regarding the transition to the market economy. As transition does not represent a purpose on its own, the strategy conceived for this period must take into account not only the objectives specific to this stage, but also the long-term goals, expressing the time continuity of strategic choices. Therefore, according to the requirements of the modern society, this strategy must consider sustainabiliy as a critical challenge.

Starting from these realities the transition to a new society, based on democratic values, with a market directed economy, has to face great political, economic, organisational, cultural, behaviour challenges. In the last five years Romania has established the main components of the necessary institutional system for transition to the market economy. The government gave many commitments on budget, banking, privatisation, restructuring and technological change to international institutions in return for their credit. This action programme is the main concern so far; however, improving the people’s living standard should be the next policy target.

All these particularities have determined the Romanian specialists to consider sustainability as a long-term run objective, gradually addressed. The concep of „mosaic ecodevelopment” is proposed (Manea 1991) as an intermediary, necessary step towards the sustainable development. It refers to the rational coexistence, in a given geographical space, of a natural economy based on agriculture and forestry, and a complementary industrial one, allowing for naturalenvironment constrains. A proper service sector is also considered. In other words, as sustainability concept is not possible to be implemented at national scale, giving the actual socio-economic circumstances, its implementation at limited area level is proposed; it is foreseen that these areas will be getting larger and larger, so that they will finally cover the whole territory of the country.