Employment and green economy

Abstract

Hungary’s accession to the EU was an important strategic decision in economic, political, and environmental, as well as in social respect. Exploiting the advantages of the accession is the biggest challenge nowadays. Our economy primarily relies on fossil fuels – crude oil, natural gas, coal, and their derivatives – which are not only used up rapidly but also pollute the environment and increase our dependence, thus hindering process. That is why we must pay increased attention to renewable energy resources, which are inexhaustible considering the human scale and they pollute the Earth to a smaller extent. It is also important in order to join the EU cohesion policy, whose main goal is to equalize the disparities between the regions, including the problem of rural employment. The competitiveness of the rural areas of Hungary depends on their economic growth and the implementation of sustainability. We need new complex rural and settlement strategies to stop the negative processes in the disadvantaged regions, which will result in a competitive agricultural structure and the possibility to employ the great numbers of low-qualified people living there. In Hungary, the ratio of the unemployed has increased since the regime change accelerating in the recent period – affected by the crisis – after a transitionary period. The majority of the unemployed have low qualifications, which makes it difficult for them to find a job. On the other hand, the ratio of the land formerly involved in cultivation is relatively high. In my view, the solution to the problem is at hand. In most cases, unused land could be cultivated again, using the free capacity of the presently unemployed and mostly low-qualified population. In my opinion, one of the possibilities is planting energy forests and cultivating them afterwards. Keywords: fossil minerals, dependency, unemployment, green economy, land utilization