Search

Among other negative economic and health outcomes, the global tourism industry is one of the most affected areas by the recent pandemic. A recent estimation shows that USD 1.3 trillion were lost in revenues, in 2020 only – which represents more than 11 times the loss suffered during the 2009 global economic crisis. It is by far the most the worst year in tourism history. As a direct consequence, many jobs are at risk, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises, in countries where tourism is the main economic component, the situation is quite dramatic. In this paper, we will analyse what happened in world large regions in the sector, what the perspectives to recovery are, and what are the rebound expectations and consumer confidence. We will also investigate the specificity of the tourism situation in Switzerland, where since the beginnings of the pandemic, the big cities and tourist locations have suffered greatly from the absence of foreign tourists. The cities close to the airports showed the strongest decreases in attendance. In contrast, those which are traditionally very touristy were only slightly affected by the decline in the number of foreign visitors.

Some multinational companies have obtained great results in the field of environmental protection, their business model being worldwide recognised. There is a permanent concern to promote sustainable policies, their efforts being unanimously appreciated. We will start our analysis from the results of an international survey, assuming that in order to develop a strategy to increase the efficiency of communication in the field of environmental protection we should establish what the ingredients of a successful recipe are, in terms of sustainability. In this paper we will also analyse the views of experts on companies that are considered being able to integrate sustainable development into their business strategy, as well as on NGOs that contribute most to positive advancement of the sustainability agenda. We will see that some companies or organizations are perceived as being leaders of these rankings, years in row, but there are also newcomers, a sign that there is a constant focus on this goal.

Measuring sustainable development represents a fundamental issue which requires a complex approach in identifying relevant indicators to capture the global transformations of the contemporary economic paradigm, within the context of increasing globalization and of the integration of markets and economies. The recent evolutions of the environmenta lanalysis enforced total water footprint as a highly popular and core environmental performance indicator.The paper presents a critical approach on using total water footprint of agricultural products as a potential sustainable development indicator from the EU perspective, by applying a specific research method on clustering and concentration. The results prove that total water footprint of the agricultural products is highly country-specific dependent. The uneven distribution shown by grouping of countries and types of agricultural products consumption confirm this argument.

Food safety represents a current topic, with significant implications and diverse approaches within the specialized literature. In the context of globalization and integration of agricultural markets, the necessity of guaranteeing food safety is imperative for the functionality of contemporary agricultural systems. The radical transformation of the national agricultural systems as a result of the influences imposed by the convergence with the requirements and directions of the European agricultural model entails a significant change for the markets of agri-food products, affecting the food trade, its structure and, implicitly, food safety. In this context, the main objective of the present paper is to examine food safety in Romania using an econometric approach to the phenomenon. Nine fundamental variables are considered, for which the causal relationship between food safety and the exogenous variables taken into analysis is tested. The time frame for data availability for all the variables is 1990-2011. The obtained results highlight the transformations of paradigm of the national agricultural model from the perspective of the dimensions regarding food safety, confirming results from previous studies.

In a global setting where the requirements for development equally address the economic viability but also social and environmental sustainability, the healthy and efficient growth of rural communities poses substantial challenges. Our paper focuses on specific conditions and constraints that influence the progress of agritourism business initiatives as viable entrepreneurial solutions for self-sustainable rural communities in Romania. To assess the impact of economic, social and tourism-related factors on agritourism entrepreneurship for Romanian counties during 2010–2015 periods, we conducted several Ordinary Least Square regression models. The results emphasize that economic indicators like regional GDP and kilometers of national roads have a positive influence on the number of agritourism business units; also, a positive impact on agritourism entrepreneurship was identified for tourism-related factors like: number of employees and corresponding salaries in tourism, total tourists, share of tourism firms and their turnover in total firms and turnover of the region, as well as preference of tourists for agritourism. The conclusions highlight the direct link between resilient agritourism entrepreneurship and sustainable development of the region and open further research directions.

The EU regional policy has been an ongoing concern of both the Member States and the candidate countries for accession. Its economic, social and territorial cohesion principles have been developed to sustain the stability and development of European integration. The Romania has established in 1998 its own regions of development, opening the gate to the implementation of regional development policies. Six regions of Romania, exactly the whole country, excepting the Bucharest Ilfov Region and West Region of development, are ranked among the 20 poorest EU regions, located in four countries of Central and Eastern Europe Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Hungary, which joined the EU in the last two enlargements. For Romania, reducing territorial disparities and achieving a balance between economic and social development levels of its regions is therefore a matter of utmost importance. This aspect has to be considered related with the new European Union’s multi-faceted approach, which seems to replace its traditional mechanisms based on regional redistribution policies and programs. This paper analyses the existing situation at the regional level in Romania, with particular reference to one of its poorest regions, which require the highest socio-economic development support: the North East Region.