Managing sustainable development on the Croatian islands - Documents, problems and perspectives

Island sustainable development planning was promoted in Croatia in 1997 following the adoption of the National Island Development Programme (NIDP) by the Croatian Parliament. The NIDP summarizes economic and demographic processes on the Croatian islands, evaluates existing development level, sets the criteria for and modalities of further development management and lists tasks to be accomplished by the state administration. The NIDP was followed by the Island Act, adopted in 1999. Derived from the NIDP the Act refrazes most of its provisions and requirements and assigns tasks to a number of ministries, government agencies, public enterprises and bodies of local administration and self-government in the six island/mainland counties and their 44 island municipalities/towns. The NIDP states that islands stand on a development crossroad from which they can take either a path of fast growth and resource exhaustion or a path of full and sustainable use of their resources. The NIDP stands for the latter, defines island comparative advantages, limiting factors and development principles and goals. The main development goal is defined as complete and sustainable use of island resources coupled with continuous betterment of quality of island life. The NIDP also defines four types of development measures. The NIDP and the Island Act define infrastructure and suprastructure programmes to be performed by particular ministries and public enterprises and a set of economic measures aimed at attracting sustainable development investors to islands. It provides a list of sustainable economic activities and clearly shows which investments will be subjected to incentives such as tax exemptions, favourable loans and special transport tariffs. The NIDP and the Island Act also promote "programmes of sustainable development" which are to serve as compulsory development documents for every inhabitated island. In this way the economic programming is brought to the same level as physical planning. The quality of these documents and the abilities of their implementers will soon be on trial.