Environmental sustainability of the agriculture in Bulgaria

Abstract

The topic of sustainable agricultural development is among the most currant in the last ten years, especially given climate change on the one hand, and on the other hand the growing concern of society and policies for the humankind and the environment. The environmental sustainability of agriculture is associated with the conservation, restoration and improvement of all constituent elements of the natural environment. These include air, water, land landscapes, biodiversity, climate, maintaining animal welfare – farmed and wild. Generally speaking, how sustainable agriculture is will depend on how compatible it is with environmental requirements.
The aim of this study is, based on existing approaches and the appropriate choice of principles, criteria and indicators, to assess the environmental sustainability of agriculture in our country.
The subject of the study is agriculture at the level of industry and specifically its environmental sustainability, as an integral part of the overall agricultural sustainability.
Based on the already developed system for assessment of the ecological sustainability of agriculture, the compatibility of agriculture with the environment and the assessment of its impact on it are estimated – based on information about certain interactions between them, obtained by analyzing a system of indicators grouped by criteria and principles. Resilience to weight loss agriculture.
The indicators selected in this analysis are only part of the many possible indicators for the environmental pillar; therefore the analysis does not claim to be comprehensive. Our aim was to cover all the criteria, using these indicators, for the calculation of which the necessary information is available. Reference values and expert assessments were used to determine the indices of resilience by indicators. A scale with appropriate levels of agricultural resilience was used. On this scale, based on the levels of sustainability by indicators, the levels of sustainability are determined by criteria and principles, and finally a general assessment of environmental sustainability for the agricultural sector is derived.