THE NEED FOR INTEGRATED APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

It is a well-known fact that healthy environment is a basic prerequisite for preserving people’s health and quality of life. Various symptoms of environmental crisis, perceptible worldwide in their various forms, are giving a clear warning that current civilization development patterns, unless significant changes and reversals occur, are unsustainable. The paper gives an overview of actual national state of the environment. It is pointed out that institutions whose competence involves the management of particular segments of the environment are insufficiently interconnected, and thus against insufficiently developed environmental awareness and the prevailing adverse economic conditions, render difficult any positive development with regard to restoring to measures for recovery and improvement aimed at preserving good quality of the environment. It is furthermore pointed out that rational and in the long-term efficient environmental protection at national level may be achieved and maintained only if considering the state of environment in its integrity, and by taking the measures and implementing the solutions based on an interdisciplinary expert approach accompanied by holistic management. In order to increase the efficiency of environmental protection, it is certainly indispensable to achieve inter-institutional integration and action while considering and contemplating individual environmental components as an integral corpus - indivisible ecosystem.