Our research focuses on implementing multilevel governance of wetlands to achieve an effective participatory process and its overall positive effects on wetland ecosystems and their protection as ...well as on local sustainable development. The aim of the research is to develop a methodology for establishing the Wetland Contract, a voluntary agreement to foster sustainable management and development of wetlands, to ensure greater coordination and consensus building between various stakeholders involved in management and to limit conflicts between preservation issues and economic activities in wetlands. The Wetland Contract and the integration process for establishing it in Ljubljansko barje Nature Park proved itself able to overcome conflicts between institutional and legal jurisdiction and is showing itself to be a dynamic path capable of activating a desirable relationship between various interests and supporting new forms of multi-sectoral stakeholder participation in wetland management. It has also contributed to a dialogue and shared responsibility among stakeholders.
In this study, we used a survey to examine how urban residents in Ljubljana, Slovenia, value and use distinct urban public spaces. Specifically, we were interested to assess if urban public spaces in ...the city are used/perceived as restorative environments. To do this, we addressed the question: To what extent do restorative dimensions differ in nine selected urban public spaces, varying in size, design, amenities, number of visitors, and, most importantly, degree of naturalness? Results from survey allowed to determine to what extent the selected urban public spaces in Ljubljana differ in terms of their perceived degree of restoration. We hypothesized that urban public spaces with a higher degree of naturalness in the city have a higher restoration value than urban public spaces with a lower degree of naturalness. Surprisingly, the urban public space that was above average on most restorative dimensions was the Old Town. These results are somewhat at odds with the attentional restoration theory, which states that the combination of dimensions is most typical of natural environments. However, this could be an indicator of the effectiveness of the city's current policies to improve the quality of life for its citizens.
Wetlands are defined as dynamic ecosystems that combine the characteristics of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and are important from ecological as well as social and economic perspectives. In ...response to the intense degradation and alteration of wetlands, communities have developed various management strategies. One of the ways to achieve more effective participatory wetland management is to introduce the concept of a Wetland Contract, a voluntary agreement that ensures sustainable management and development of wetlands. This study on the Sečovlje Salina Nature Park in Slovenia follows the methodology of the preparation (legal framework, scientific description and stakeholder analysis) and implementation (organization of Territorial Labs, scenario planning and development) stages of the Wetland Contract concept. Of approximately 200 potential stakeholders, 34 participated in the Territorial Labs, and 16 stakeholders signed the less binding type of Wetland Contract, called the Memorandum of Understanding. The Memorandum of Understanding and its implementation process, which included systematic cross-sectoral participation, successfully overcame conflicts between stakeholders with different interests. The methodology used has shown great potential for further applications in wetlands of common interest.
The study presented in this article focuses on the role of a smart waste bin (waste container) designed for waste management and explores what types of interventions people consider more appropriate ...in promoting environmentally responsible behaviour-based on norms or on an individual's emotions. The smart waste bin development process was people-centred and paid particular attention to human experiences, allowing for various interaction modalities. By incorporating various sensors for waste volume and weight measurement in conjunction with presence and user identification capabilities, the experience was personalised. User feedback was collected by an extensive survey, consisting of four systematic sections, where values, attitudes, norms, perceived behavioural control, behavioural intention and actual behaviour were examined. The survey was completed by 194 respondents. The results showed that participants at the declarative level show a high level of environmental awareness and are very much willing to handle waste appropriately. Additionally, the results of the R&D process indicated that relatively cheap and efficient technological solutions can be developed to support waste management and sustainable lifestyles if the human-centred approach is taken into account.
In recent years, post-consumer textile waste has become an important issue that attracts attention from activists, scientists and the media. The production and use of clothing has more than doubled ...in the last fifteen years due to declining costs, streamlined operations and rising consumption under the influence of fast fashion. According to research, the average European buys as much as 26 kg of textiles each year and discards 11 kg, while a very small share of post-consumer textile waste is recycled. This article presents the findings of a study on household textile waste in the capital of Ljubljana. The research showed that despite the significant declarative environmental awareness of people for sustainable behavior in the field of textile waste, the share of those decreases with exposure to actual behavior. However, there are few people who are completely uninterested in reducing textile waste, as most people are aware of the problem and pay more and more attention to it. The authors study the management of textile waste and its creation by the inhabitants of Ljubljana in the broader context of the influences of fast fashion, as well as the cultural specifics of the Slovenian society.
This paper uses findings from sustainability studies to present the development of environmental urban geography in Slovenia in recent decades. Modern European cities, of which Ljubljana is no ...exception, depart significantly from sustainable development concepts. Compared to other similar cities, Ljubljana has an effective green space system, which its residents also perceive as offering a better-quality living environment. The major, poorly addressed problems are primarily inherited issues, such as gravel pits, illegal dumping sites, and unregulated gardens in suburbanized water protection areas on which residents depend. These, however, show a large gap between claimed and actual environmental awareness.
The beauty of landforms Smrekar, Aleš; Polajnar Horvat, Katarina; Erhartič, Bojan
Acta geographica Slovenica : Geografski zbornik,
01/2016, Volume:
56, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article determines which landforms attract people the most and whether one can speak of collective patterns in the aesthetic evaluation of a landscape. It therefore concerns enjoying the beauty ...offered by a more or less reshaped natural environment. This study is based on the Triglav Lakes Valley (Dolina Triglavskih jezer) in Slovenia which, due to the few man-made changes introduced there, includes hardly any anthropogenic “unnecessary noise.” The online survey included more than six hundred people and used photos of various landforms. Lakes were found to be the most attractive to the respondents, and fractured rock areas were the least attractive.
Environmental activism, defined as a range of difficult pro-environmental behaviors, is analyzed within the conceptual framework of Significance Quest Theory (SQT). In Study 1, 40 interviews were ...carried out on two groups of people in the European Union: Committed Actors for Nature (CANs, n = 25) versus Committed Actors for Society (CASs, n = 15). Results demonstrated that Significance Quest (SQ) motivates each group to be strongly committed to their chosen action and the main difference between them being in their ideology (pro-social vs. pro-environmental). In Study 2 (N = 131), the relationship between SQ and intention to enact difficult pro-environmental behaviors was assessed. Results suggested that the higher the SQ, the higher the tendency to enact difficult pro-environmental behaviors, but not average or easy ones. Moreover, the higher the pro-environmental ideology, the stronger the indirect effect of SQ on difficult behavior through willingness to sacrifice.
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