Poverty in Bulgaria: Dimensions, policies and analyses

The article discusses poverty in Bulgaria through the prism of the correspondence between the unfavorable wellbeing rates, the implemented policy's measures and the state of analyses in the field. By presenting existing national and EU comparative statistics, analyzing policy documents and outlining limits and prevailing bias in the scientific research on the subject, it argues that the three aspects are functionally consistent and that overcoming the high levels of poverty in the country needs reconsidered and mobilizing actions aimed at: a) better consistency among policies in different fields (economic, social, tax, insurance, labor market, environmental, etc.); and b) knowledge-based development focused on adequate addressing of structural generators of poverty.Ovaj članak sagledava siromaštvo u Bugarskoj kroz prizmu odnosa između nepovoljnih stopa blagostanja, sprovedenih političkih mera i stanja analize u ovoj oblasti. Predstavljajući postojeće nacionalne i uporedne EU statističke, analizirajući dokumenta politike i utvrđujući ograničenja i prevladavajuće predrasude u naučnom istraživanju o ovoj temi, tvrdi se da su tri aspekta funkcionalno dosledna i da prevazilaženje visokih stopa siromaštva u zemlji treba ponovo razmotriti i organizovati aktivnosti čiji je cilj: a) veća doslednost između politika u raznim oblastima (ekonomija, socijalna pitanja, porezi, osiguranje, tržište rada, zaštita životne sredine itd.) i b) razvoj zasnovan na znanju i usmeren na adekvatno bavljenje strukturalnim generatorima siromaštva

Implementation of a Just Green Transition: Notions and Risks

The paper discusses opportunities and risks in making just green transitions. Existing notions of justice and results of studies of established unfavorable processes in different countries, such as insufficient support of affected groups, mechanisms of rent extraction and corrupt practices, are analyzed. The review outlines serious challenges to the necessary transitions to low carbon energy systems. On this basis, the study argues for the need to build public capacity through a preliminary and consistent framework that clearly outlines pro-development notions of justice, meaningful alignment of social and environmental goals, and honest monitoring of potential problems, along with solutions to overcome them

Chemical Similarity and Threshold of Toxicological Concern (TTC) Approaches: Report of an ECB Workshop held in Ispra, November 2005

There are many national, regional and international programmes – either regulatory or voluntary – to assess the hazards or risks of chemical substances to humans and the environment. The first step in making a hazard assessment of a chemical is to ensure that there is adequate information on each of the endpoints. If adequate information is not available then additional data is needed to complete the dataset for this substance. For reasons of resources and animal welfare, it is important to limit the number of tests that have to be conducted, where this is scientifically justifiable. One approach is to consider closely related chemicals as a group, or chemical category, rather than as individual chemicals. In a category approach, data for chemicals and endpoints that have been already tested are used to estimate the hazard for untested chemicals and endpoints. Categories of chemicals are selected on the basis of similarities in biological activity which is associated with a common underlying mechanism of action. A homologous series of chemicals exhibiting a coherent trend in biological activity can be rationalised on the basis of a constant change in structure. This type of grouping is relatively straightforward. The challenge lies in identifying the relevant chemical structural and physicochemical characteristics that enable more sophisticated groupings to be made on the basis of similarity in biological activity and hence purported mechanism of action. Linking two chemicals together and rationalising their similarity with reference to one or more endpoints has been very much carried out on an ad hoc basis. Even with larger groups, the process and approach is ad hoc and based on expert judgement. There still appears to be very little guidance about the tools and approaches for grouping chemicals systematically. In November 2005, the ECB Workshop on Chemical Similarity and Thresholds of Toxicological Concern (TTC) Approaches was convened to identify the available approaches that currently exist to encode similarity and how these can be used to facilitate the grouping of chemicals. This report aims to capture the main themes that were discussed. In particular, it outlines a number of different approaches that can facilitate the formation of chemical groupings in terms of the context under consideration and the likely information that would be required. Grouping methods were divided into one of four classes – knowledge-based, analogue-based, unsupervised, and supervised. A flowchart was constructed to attempt to capture a possible work flow to highlight where and how these approaches might be best applied.JRC.I.3-Toxicology and chemical substance

An agenda for future Social Sciences and Humanities research on energy efficiency : 100 priority research questions

Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)-including critical reflections on what changing a society's relation to energy (efficiency) even means-have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policymakers, funders, and other decision-makers when driving research agendas, and (ii) the setting of SSH-focused research agendas has not historically embedded inclusive and deliberative processes. The aim of this paper is to address these gaps through the production of a research agenda outlining future SSH research priorities for energy efficiency. A Horizon Scanning exercise was run, which sought to identify 100 priority SSH questions for energy efficiency research. This exercise included 152 researchers with prior SSH expertise on energy efficiency, who together spanned 62 (sub-)disciplines of SSH, 23 countries, and a full range of career stages. The resultant questions were inductively clustered into seven themes as follows: (1) Citizenship, engagement and knowledge exchange in relation to energy efficiency; (2) Energy efficiency in relation to equity, justice, poverty and vulnerability; (3) Energy efficiency in relation to everyday life and practices of energy consumption and production; (4) Framing, defining and measuring energy efficiency; (5) Governance, policy and political issues around energy efficiency; (6) Roles of economic systems, supply chains and financial mechanisms in improving energy efficiency; and (7) The interactions, unintended consequences and rebound effects of energy efficiency interventions. Given the consistent centrality of energy efficiency in policy programmes, this paper highlights that well-developed SSH approaches are ready to be mobilised to contribute to the development, and/or to understand the implications, of energy efficiency measures and governance solutions. Implicitly, it also emphasises the heterogeneity of SSH policy evidence that can be produced. The agenda will be of use for both (1) those new to the energy-SSH field (including policyworkers), for learnings on the capabilities and capacities of energy-SSH, and (2) established energy-SSH researchers, for insights on the collectively held futures of energy-SSH research.Peer reviewe

Bulgaria National Report on Social Services

Report on the status of social services in Bulgaria as of 2003.International Labour Organizationunpublishe

Proposal for future research based on EXCEPT project.

The aim of this working paper is to highlight unsolved issues and empirical data problems that were identified by the EXCEPT research consortium. Against this background new ideas for future research (including new data collections and ideas for policy evaluation) are presented that have been developed by the EXCEPT consortium

Assessing the similarity of nanoforms based on the biodegradation of organic surface treatment chemicals

A substance may have one or more nanoforms, defined for regulatory purposes under EU chemicals legislation REACH based on differences in physicochemical properties such as size, shape, specific surface area and surface chemistry including coatings. To reduce the burden of testing each unique nanoform for the environmental risk assessment of nanomaterials, grouping approaches allow simultaneous assessment of multiple nanoforms. Nanoforms with initially different intrinsic properties, could still be considered similar if their environmental fate and effects can be demonstrated to be similar. One hypothesis to group nanoforms with different organic surface modifications is to use parameters linked to biodegradation of the organic surface. The hypothesis contends that nanoforms with a similar core chemistry, but different organic surface treatments may be grouped, if the surface treatment is likely to be lost through biodegradation rapidly upon entering an environmental compartment, such that it no longer modulates fate, exposure and toxicity of the nanoform. To implement grouping according to surface treatment biodegradability, a robust approach to measure the breakdown of particle surface treatments is needed. We present a tiered testing strategy to assess the biodegradation of organic surface treatments used with nanomaterials that can be implemented as part of an Integrated Approach to Testing and Assessment (IATA) for grouping based on surface treatment stability. The tiered approach consists of an initial pre-screening MT2 colorimetric carbon substrate utilisation assay, to provide a rapid assessment of coating degradation, and a second tier of testing using OECD Test Guideline 301F for assessing organic chemical biodegradability. Six common surface treatment substances are assessed using the tiered testing strategy to refine rules for escalating between tiers. Similarity assessment using absolute Euclidean distances and x-fold difference concluded that the Tier 1 assessment can be used as conservative binary screening for biodegradability (no false positive results in Tier 1), whilst for substances showing intermediate biodegradation (10–60% in OECD 301F, Tier 2), similarity assessments can be informative for grouping surface treatments not considered readily biodegradable. Further validation using higher tier tests (e.g., mesocosms) is needed to define acceptable limits of similarity between intermediately biodegradable substances, where differences in biodegradability of the surface coating lead to negligible differences in fate, behaviour and toxicity of the nanoforms, and this is critically discussed