Public Environmental Protection Project Management Practices in Ukraine

Abstract

The paper follows the implementation of “Good practices of public environmental expenditure management in transition economies” suggested by UN Economic Commission for Europe in Ukrainian context. The study illustrates that Ukraine follows the UNECE’s good practices in some points, however its actual performance when it comes to environmental effectiveness, management efficiency and fiscal prudence is half way less than the best possible performance. The full success of copying UNECE’s good practices has not been observed in the Ukrainian case. However, the plausible scope conditions for successful copying for developing roadmap for remedying the situation on environmental protection project management in Ukraine can be suggested.

This paper seeks to contribute to the call for more research on the internal and external drivers and barriers to modernization of public financial management in the Central and Eastern European countries. Previous research, discussing the context of Central Europe shows that the issue of the relation between economic growth and environmental protection at the state and municipal levels has become increasingly important in recent years, e.g. in case of Czech Republic. However, since its independence, Ukraine has been a major receiver of external aid not only financial one, but also in the form of knowledge, advices, recommendations, good practices, etc. This articles builds up on Røvik’s translation perspective on knowledge transfer to illustrate how “Good practices of public environmental expenditure management in transition economies” suggested by UN Economic Commission for Europe have been reproduced by Ukrainian government and how this policy translation can be explained in Ukrainian context.