Sustainаble development of protected rural area of Serbia

Одрживи развој заштићених руралних простора Србије, односно административних територија насеља која припадају њиховом геопросторном обухвату, подразумева интеграцију низа фундаменталних и апликативних проблема и циљева...Sustainable development of the protected rural area of Serbia, or belonging settlements and administrative territories, implies the integration of a range of fundamental and applied problems and objectives, characteristic as per scientific complexity and social importance, so the growing topicality as well. Problem-solving and spatial framework of the research is motivated by the perception of this issue as a scientifically and empirically demanding, integrated, non-schematic, challenging and socially useful. Also, with the conviction that the theoretical and methodological assumptions of modern science on the environment – its fundamental (environment, geoecology, anthropogeography and others), and applicational (nature protection, sustainable development, urban planning, practice of social development, GIS and others) disciplines, it is possible to solve this multi-disciplinary oriented subject. Writing of the thesis is followed by the continuity of transformation and expansion of the epistemological/ontological and theoretical/applicational properties as the environmental science and its core disciplines, so as the normative planning practice of the protection of space. The applied approach of the perception of system „protected landscape areas – rural areas – sustainable development“ has been extended to the position of anthropocentrism (the paradigm of human excellence) as a determinant value of geospace. The anthropocentric approach, in addition to the importance of original nature, also implies the value of traditional and environmentally friendly economic, settlement, demographic and other potentials. That is why, instead of protection in the spirit of ecology and conservation, the preferred forms and mechanisms of sustainable, that is channeled and controlled, development have been proposed with holding the consistency principle – focus on specific values of individual protected territories. This view of the sustainability, by nature, is close to geographers, environmental geographers, social ecologists, tourism experts, spatial planners, demographers, economists and others. Starting from the hypothesis that environmental restrictions aimed at rural areas do not harm the opportunities for their development and do not threaten existential security of the population, an ecological-geographic approach of environmental management in rural areas whose territories partially or completely belong to the protected areas in the Republic of Serbia, was proposed in dissertation. The researches have shown that current models of the protected rural areas management are characterized by exaggerated formal, or normative-planning, and at the same time de facto dysfunctional environmental protection. Long-term effects of this situation have often degraded rare and valuable elements of nature as motives of protection and enlarged developmental disproportions in the territory of Serbia. The empirical researches of diverse and representative model systems clearly show that , in the past, the numerous inherited and generated new negative effects of the importance for the environmental and socio-economic status of the protected rural areas of Serbia have survived. IV The cumulative effects of the above mentioned processes (at the local level) are well advanced environmental degradation and economic and settlement-demographic devastation of these areas, which at the regional and national level encourage the deepening and complexity of development issues. In contrast, the proposed model of sustainable development of the protected rural areas of Serbia contributes to enlargement of rational and environmentally justified valorization of the national territory and the total development potentials. By a such practice, their sustainable development, would, by the mechanisms of the desired direction and control (by type and intensity), reduce current developmental delay and poverty level, and increase the ability of local communities towards a rational and purposeful use of resources with the ultimate objective of their preservation. So far adopted planning documents in Serbia do not explicitly deal with sustainable development of the rural areas in spatial coverage of the protected areas. In this sense, the necessity of making this type of documents would represent the starting point for the proper management of these territories in the direction of finding a solution that would allow the survival of the settlements, and which revitalization would contribute to major development opportunities of the protected area. The market economy as decentralized and privatizing model of development and other effects of the transition of society, were reflected in unrealistic valuation of environmental services and protection of space. Therefore, it was necessary to investigate the mechanisms and move the initiative in the direction of redefition of the mutual relation and total ecological and social role of the protected rural areas of Serbia. Such starting points in further considerations imply that these areas should not be observed and treated only as parts (elements) of particularly valuable and important territories in the function of protection, which is often accentuated approach, but as potentially significant development projects. The presented starting points, analyses, results and proposed models suggest that the thesis had two spatial and problem solutions – in order to give the solution for the empirical issues of the local scope and theoretical issues of regional and global scope. The results can serve as a basis for future research papers, with the aim of a more complex analysis and verification of directions and opportunities for sustainable development of the protected rural areas of Serbia. This paper presents an attempt to answer another request – basic axiological assumption that its results are practically useful as well. The above mentioned gains importance in the way that these issues are taken into consideration in, for them, time of crisis, in which the crisis is not only manifested by accumulated problems, but also acute shortage of ideas and resources for their research and solving