EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL TOURISM IN RURAL AREAS

Cultural identity is the result of a historical development process and could become a source of wealth within the conditions of an appropriate management. One of the possibilities to materialize this relation is by it through cultural tourism. The paper aims to highlight the particularities of this type of tourism in rural areas and the ways how public administration could be involved in providing the balance between the needs of residents and the needs of visitors. In fact, it is constructed an argument for the positive correlation between cultural tourism and local development, departing from the premise that this could manifest itself only if the local public administration is involved in the design and implementation of coherent programs, that follows the milestones of a realistic visions, built on the base of objective and detailed knowledge of the local context.heritage, cultural tourism, public administration, rural area

ECONOMICAL CRISIS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION’S COHESION POLICY

The current global economic crisis is a major challenge for the European Union and requires a rapid response to counter the impact on the whole economy. One of the measures taken at the level of the European Union was the accelaration of the investment projects. With a financial aid of over €350 billion for the period 2007-2013, cohesion policy provides a considerable support for the public investments made in the EU's Member States and regions. The present paper aims to analyse the necessary measures necessary to speed up the implementation of European Union cohesion policy and to help states to tackle the challenge brought by the global economic crisis.economic crisis, cohesion policy, European Union

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN ROMANIA: EXPERIENCES IN THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS

Sustainable development builds the vision on the future and it is shaped in goals and appropriate actions for all levels of approach. The progress towards this future necessitates the definition of intermediary plans for objectives and targets that allow an operational approach. In Romania, the significance of sustainable development is circumscribed to the equity notion, being translated, on short term, as regional development. Although sustainable development supposes the simultaneous progress on economic, social and environmental plans, the current situation reveals the need to eliminate gaps among them, respectively to prioritize economic objectives. The paper analyzes the accomplishments based on the typology and size of projects that had financial support by the specific operational programs. The results are discussed in relation with strategic European goals, but also as argument for the importance of public power in reaching the development and welfare goals.sustainable development, financial support, European goals, regional distribution.

Quantitative Solutions for the Substantiation of Decisions on the Food Market

The present paper intends, by using the spectral analysis, to measure and analyze the intensity of systematic variations of the time series referring to one of the most sensitive and important statistical macro-economic indicators, which has a significant impact upon all the economic and social policy decisions – the average monthly rate of consumer prices for food commodities.Fourier series; seasonality; consumer prices; food commodities.

MANAGERIAL DIMENSION OF FOOD CRISIS

Care for public health is of primary importance for any governmental policy, since human health is the most valuable for social development. The national health policy concentrates efforts toward strengthening public health and re-launching of economic activities. The paper analysis the public health indicators in Romania related to food safety. It ends up by identifying several challenges to be addressed at governmental levelquality management, food safety, food security, sustainable agriculture.

Measures of Environmental Performance

Sustainable development was recognized and accepted easily as a vision for afuture in which the “limits of growth” are respected while the wealth and welfare of humans continues to increase. Governments, companies, communities, and even individuals are now aware that environment needs more consideration and some effort should be invested in protecting or restoring it. Most of these efforts mean higher costs and lower incomes or profit, contradicting the basic tenets of economics. Nevertheless, there is an area where the interests could and should meet. This area is efficiency, and since it could be interpreted from the perspective of environmental outcomes, is ecoefficiency. Reducing water consumption, energy use, amount of waste that is generated, volume of discharged waste water means for a company less costs. In case that these reductions are occurring and production is steady or even increasing, efficiency is improved, along with the environmental performance of the company. The paper explains the rational of eco-efficiency concept and makes comments on a number of quantitative approaches.environmental performance, sustainable development, eco-efficiency, environmental impact, environmental pressure.

System Approach – Decision Support in the Management of Environmental Protection

Relationships between society and environment became an important subject for research in all domains of science. The emergency of problem solving and the incomplete knowledge of numerous elements, processes and interactions have created a number of problematic situations in managerial terms. Therefore, in the field of management researches pursued to cherish the accumulated experience and to formulate or reformulate a number of theories according to the requirements of environmental protection. Solving environmental problems at managerial level faced many difficulties due to insufficient information, unclear responsibilities, reduced predictability, large social implications, and increased social and political pressure. The system approach could bring in a useful perspective for decision making by supplying information on the possible evolution and characteristics of the ecosystems and socio-ecological systems that occur under the influence of economic, social and political factors at different spatial and temporal scales.human-nature relation; system; complexity; decision making; environmental protection.

CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMICAL CRISIS ON EUROPEAN UNION’S COHESION POLICY

The current global economic crisis is a major challenge for the European Union and requires a rapid response to counter the impacts on the whole economy. On of the measure take to the level of the European Union was accelerating investment project. With a financial envelope of over €350 billion for the period 2007-2013, cohesion policy provides considerable support to public investment by the EU's Member States and regions, The paper aim is to analyses the necessary measure takes in order to speed up the implementation of European Union cohesion policy and to help state tackle the challenge brought by the global economic crisis.cohesion policy, convergence, regional competitiveness, employment, economical crisis

POLLUTION’S IMPACT ON THE QUALITY OF DRINKING WATER

Water is essential for life and the way we use water in our activity has a direct impact on the environment. The Report of the Public Health Institute on drinking water quality from urban localities highlighted that the total population potentially exposed to the risk, taking into consideration the age of the distribution networks, water source quality and parameters, is estimated to be about 9.8 million inhabitants in urban areas. The paper analyses the main factors that affect the quality of drinking water, in the conditions than 100 million people in the European region still do not have access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation and the quality of the water supply and sanitation services has deteriorated continuously over the past 15 years, with the rural population being most affected.nitrate contamination, leakage, drinking water, wastewater treatment

LOW ENTROPY: CREATING PHYSICAL BASIS FOR ECONOMIC VALUE BY ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY TOOLS

The economic value is expressed by prices, but their high volatility was a strong reason to consider other elements to be used for measurement. The most appropriate elements for this were established by the theories of value that explain how value is created, enhanced, transferred, and how it influence prices. By revealing the changing economic contexts that forced these theories to adapt and to use different physical basis for value calculation it is prepared a framework model to analyse the current environmental policy. The case study of carbon markets highlighted the limited possibility of restraining access to common goods signalling that a proper addressing of the environmental challenge will necessitate more important changes to be made