PRESERVATION OF REGIONAL IDENTITY DURING THE ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN UKRAINE (IN EXAMPLE OF THE ODESSA REGION)

Abstract

Throughout the history of Ukraine, there have been two opposite tendencies: a historical approach to regional division, which manifested itself in the formation of ideas about the cultural, ethnic, linguistic and other diversity of its historical lands, which for a long time were part of different states and a rational approach – the creation of such administrative-territorial units (provinces, voivodships, districts, regions), which would level regional differences and contribute to political centralization. Since the beginning of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, several attempts have been made to change the administrative-territorial structure in accordance with the European principles of territorial administration. The main purpose of the work is to consider some issues of environmental management and regional identity within the framework of the new districts and administrative and territorial structure created in the Odessa region as a result of the administrative reform. The theoretical basis of the study is the provisions of economic theory, environmental economics, theory of sustainable development, institutional analysis. The methodological basis of the research is a set of such general scientific and special methods used to achieve the goal of the work, in particular, the system approach, the dialectical method of cognition and comparative legal analysis, the historical approach, the method of cause-and-effect relationships, economic and statistical methods. The decentralization policy in Ukraine is an effective model of the identity formation policy at the regional level. In 2014, after the approval of the Concept of reforming local self-government in our country, transformational changes began, which resulted in the approval in 2020 of a new administrative-territorial structure of the district level and the level of territorial communities. As part of the decentralization reform in 2020, the administrative-territorial division of the region has changed. So instead of 490 village, settlement and city councils, 91 territorial communities were allocated, and instead of 26 liquidated districts – 7 new districts. When carrying out the reform, the physical-geographical zoning, natural-recreational potential and socio-cultural characteristics of the multicultural region were not fully taken into account, which ultimately leads to inadequate receipt by a person of the benefits provided for by law, incl. ecosystems. Ignoring these problems may in the near future in the foreseeable future lead to an imbalance in the systems of the region, irrational use of natural resources, including land use, and inconsistency with the existing concept of sustainable development.