Spatial Diversification of Financial Involvement of Rural Communes (Gminas) In the Environmental Protection Investments in Poland

Abstract

This article aims to recognition and assessment of extent to which the Polish rural communes participate in financing of environmental protection investments. Investments in the natural environment protection are the subject of the article. Special attention of the analysis is focused on the issue of their funding, especially funding from budgets of rural communes, including the territorial division into provinces. Secondary sources of statistical information for 2014 were used in the investigations. Environmental protection investments in Poland are financed from sources that differ in character and performance. Among the sources of funding for environmental protection investments, the most important are own means covering about half of the outlays on fixed assets for the natural environmental protection. Expenses from communes’ budgets are of marginal importance for the structure of environmental protection funding. In 2014, they were shaped at a level similar to the amount of expenditure for this purpose spent from the central budget and the budgets of counties. Rural communes, which constitute 63,8 % of all communes in Poland, finance almost 30 % of expenditure on environmental protection investments carried out by the communes as a whole. Environmental protection is an important objective of local politics. Among the investment priorities of rural communes it is placed after investments in the sphere of agriculture, public security and fire protection. The largest scale of investment expenditure on the environmental protection in 2014 was recorded in the malopolskie and mazowieckie provinces, where rural communes financed almost 15 % of total investment outlays on this purpose spent by all rural communes in Poland. Tangible effects of the realized environmental investments financed from rural communes’ budgets in 2014 in Poland are diversified spatially. For example, considering investments in wastewater management, three provinces (malopolskie, slaskie and mazowieckie) realized investments such as collective sewerage system discharge sewage constituting over one third of the total length of such system built in 2014 in rural areas of Poland total.