Financial involvement of local government units in achieving environmental objectives of sustainable development in Poland

Abstract

Poland’s achievement of sustainable development goals, including environmental goals, requires substantial financial outlays and the necessity of incurring high expenditures by, among others, local government units (LGU). The article focuses on green investment expenditures incurred by LGU budgets.  The aim is to identify and diagnose the spatial variation of these expenditures in the context of sustainable development goals and the new taxonomy for classifying economic activities as environmentally sustainable.  The added value of the article is: first, to identify the structure of green investment expenditures of LGU, which enables to show their changes in the context of sustainable development goals, and second, to conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis of these expenditures, including all cities with county rights and municipalities, divided into urban, rural and urban-rural types in Poland into three periods: 2004-2006, 2007-2013 and 2014-2020.  The study, carried out using the TOPSIS method, showed a wide variation in the level of green investment expenditures made from the budgets of local government units.