Sustainability measured by annual statistical reports – Đerdap National Park (Serbia)

Abstract

Protection and sustainable development are the backbone of the Carpathian Convention (2003). The Convention was created to ensure the application of the sustainable approach at the international level, referring to economic, social and environmental aspects. The evaluation of sustainability is under constant reconsideration, which includes the issues of indicator selection and the data availability (Bell & Morse 2018). This research considers availability of longitudinal data and, based on that, it aims to recognize 1) the trajectory of the basic sustainability indicators in Đerdap National Park and 2) whether the trajectory coincides with the signing of the Carpathian Convention and its implementation in Serbia. Here are used the annual statistical reports covering data applicable for measuring three sustainability aspects since the establishment of the Carpathian Convection. Therefore, the year of the signing the Convention (2003) is defined as the starting point of the trajectory, the year 2008 is taken for the middle point (2008), whereas the year of the last published statistical report (2019) represents the finishing time-point. Social sustainability is measured by population size, population average age, structure of employed (agriculture, forestry, fishery, tourism); economic sustainability by unemployment rate, number of employed per 1,000 inhabitants, number of tourists and touristic overnight stays, local budget incomes; and environmental sustainability by structure of employed (tourism, mining), share of forest areas, average wood volume, and share of households connected to the sewage system. Changes in the share of protection designations are used to measure protection aspect. The Đerdap National Park is chosen as the case study because its territory coincides with the geographical scope of the Carpathian Convention in Serbia.