Medium-term Management of Green Budget: The Case of Ukraine
The purpose of this study is to examine the medium-term budget planning process in Ukraine and the extent to which this approach is used within the environmental sector. It aims to assist the Ukrainian government to integrate environmental programmes more effectively into overall programming, financial planning and budgeting practices which could result into more adequate and predictable allocations to the environment sector. The study also seeks to analyse the implications of the progressive shift in aid modalities towards sectoral and general budget support. This report was prepared within the framework of the OECD Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Programme for Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. The report also builds upon work that started within the OECD Task Team on Governance and Capacity Development for Natural Resource and Environmental Management, a joint Task Team of the OECD Development Assistance and Environmental Policy Committees. In addition, the report contributes to the debate on Green Growth, demonstrating the need for more adequate and well-costed environmental budgets, in the context of medium-term expenditure frameworks, as a means of promoting structural changes as part of the transition to green economy.
Neighbourhood Countries: Promoting Environmental Protection Close to Home
This chapter analyses EU external environmental policy towards the neighbourhood countries. The EU places special emphasis on establishing institutions of environmental governance and developing horizontal policy instruments in this region. Countries that have chosen to engage with the EU politically, such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, are obliged by ways of Association Agreements to implement stepwise the EU’s environmental acquis. However, their incentives to do so are often unrelated to environmental or climate policy but concern political goals such as access to the European single market or liberalizing visa regulations with the EU. EU capacity-building efforts place an increased emphasis on the administrative potential of the neighbourhood states to implement international commitments and the inclusion of business actors in the policy process. In parallel the EU is also reaching out to domestic environmental NGOs which are becoming local translators of EU rules and can act as watchdogs overseeing the implementation of these rules.
Arab Uprisings and the Outstanding Return to Democracy: Tunisia as a Model
In the wake of the Middle Eastern crises, the Tunisian case in focus has been doted as a unique phenomenon being that it was the Genesis of the revolution that ultimately spread across the Middle East like wild fire, but has eventually heralded a new dawn as democracy has incidentally returned to the Empire. This literature therefore looks closely at the extent to which the ‘DignityRevolution’ has been instrumental in the Middle East uprisings, which have brought an end to dynastic autocracies. The literature zeros in on the Tunisian uprising which has attracted global concerns, sympathy and has sparked interests in the international arena. The literature finds that the people hold colossal prospect in the uprising and its resultant effect, as it paved the way for the revolutionist to generate, gather and disseminate information on the condition of the entire region to the international community. The people in this context were of utmost importance and played a very crucial role in the creation of awareness, mobilization of protesters and utmost determining the direction of the uprising and also ensuring a speedy return to democratic rule. The paper submits that the role of the people in ensuring that the ruins of the uprising is not left littering around and democracy restored is highly commendable and should be a model for all other Arab countries involved in the revolution.