Sustainable agricultural land use in the post-socialist camp countries: Monitoring and evaluation

Abstract

The purpose of the article - to carry out the monitoring and evaluation of agricultural land use sustainability in the post-socialist camp countries. Methodology. During the study, the following methods were used: dialectical, abstract and logical, system analysis, index, and graphical comparison. Monitoring and evaluating of the agricultural land use sustainability involves periodic tracking relevant indicators based on available official statistics, central authorities' information, local authorities and carrying out, on the basis of monitoring, the ranking in the post-socialist camp countries by comparing the obtained results with their best values. Monitoring and evaluating of the agricultural land sustainability conducted to monitor the process of sustainable agricultural development goals implementation, problems' identification of regions agricultural land use and their causes, improving the efficiency of administrative decisions of central executive authorities, local authorities and the land market actors. Elements of scientific innovation. Existing methods for determining the integral indicator for comparing the land use sustainability and own method was suggested, by which the relevant calculations and conclusions were made. The proposed methodology ensures the implementation of appropriate objectives and indicators for monitoring the Global Sustainable Development Goals 2016-2030 achievement in Ukraine. Practical significance. The availability of the integral environmental and economic indicators at the macro level is ideal for people who make decisions in terms of consideration of the environmental factors on the country's development. The main goal of an integral indicator for comparing the sustainability of land use development in the regions of Ukraine creating is to ensure the possibility of ranking these regions in order of their total potential decreasing and thus defining "depressed" for providing the state aid to them. Conclusions. According to the given methods, it has been proved that agricultural land use in the countries of the post-socialist camp has a positive dynamics but the sustainability indicators for all indicators have not achieved yet. It has been defined that Estonia, Latvia, and Slovenia got the first three places; and Croatia, Lithuania, and Romania got the last places in the ranking of sustainability of the agricultural land use for the countries of the post-socialist camp. In accordance with settlements for solving the problems in the area of agricultural land use, the state should focus on less developed regions where the environmental situation is difficult, productivity and land return reduced, slowed population growth, and which have an excessive migration.