Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, No. 49 (2020): 31–41 http://doi.org/10.2478/bog-2020-0030 BULLETIN OF GEOGRAPHY. SOCIO–ECONOMIC SERIES journal homepages: https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/bog/bog-overview.xml ISSN 1732–4254 quarterly http://apcz.umk.pl/czasopisma/index.php/BGSS/index Local initiatives for green space using Poland’s Village Fund: evidence from Lodzkie voivodeship Marcin Feltynowski University of Łódź, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, POW Street 3/5, Łódź, Poland, e-mail: [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4919-2851 How to cite: Feltynowski, M. (2020). Local initiatives for green space using Poland’s village fund: evidence from Lodzkie voivodeship. Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 50(50): 31-41. DOI: http://doi.org/10.2478/bog-2020-0030 Abstract. Poland’s Village Fund (Fundusz Sołecki) is an instrument operating at Article details: the level of the so-called sołectwo, into which local-administration units known Received: 19 September 2020 as gminas may be further sub-divided. These are therefore auxiliary administra- Revised: 10 October 2020 Accepted: 25 October 2020 tive units in rural areas whose receipt of means from the Fund in question allows for the activation of local communities. Against that background, the research de- tailed here sought to examine Village Fund by reference to the greenspace-related Key words: projects pursued using it in the rural gminas of Łódzkie Voivodeship. Additional Village Fund, aspects are the classification of the tasks carried out, presentation of the statisti- allocation of funding, cal analysis applied, and consideration of the breakdown obtained for indicators green space, relating to the share of funds allocated to green areas – by reference to the prop- rural gminas, erties of the normal distribution curve. Lodzkie voivodeship Contents: 1. Introduction . 32 2. Theoretical background ................................................................. 32 2.1. The Village Fund as an instrument allowing green space to be established and maintained . 32 2.2. Materials and methods.............................................................. 34 3. Results of study ........................................................................ 35 4. Discussion ............................................................................. 38 5. Conclusions............................................................................ 39 References ............................................................................... 40 © 2020 (Marcin Feltynowski) This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Li- cense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 32 Marcin Feltynowski / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 50(2020): 31–41 1. Introduction Fund remains in its infancy, given that the subject matter of local communities being activated using this kind of instrument is only available for analy- Local development is to be understood as the pur- sis from 2009 onwards. Research that has been or is poseful management of resources with a view to the being carried out matches the topic of participatory quality of life of inhabitants being raised (Neil and budgeting, which has undoubtedly been appearing Tykkylèainen, 1998; OECD, 2001). A major fun- in both the Polish and foreign subject literature (Sz- dament of this process is provided by bottom-up escilo, 2015; Gilman, 2016; Bernaciak, Rzeńca and initiatives pursued under the supervision of local Sobol, 2017, 2018). authorities. A solution of this kind applied in Po- The work underpinning the present article has land is Fundusz Sołecki – here translated as ”the been a wide-ranging data search through spend- Village Fund” – providing for action in the name of ing engaged in by the rural gminas within the a local community that is developed and then tak- Polish province-region centred around the central- en by that community. Initiatives arising out of the ly-located city of Łódź, otherwise known as Łódzkie Village Fund fall within the definition of local de- Voivodeship. Specifically, the search was narrowed velopment as applied by the OECD (2001), wherein down to the spending of means from the Village emphasis is placed on the strengthened participa- Fund on activities related more or less closely with tion of local people, by way of bottom-up initiatives rural green space. In a further part of the work, an in particular (Bernaciak, Rzeńca and Sobol, 2017). attempt was made at the mathematical and statisti- The espousal of this kind of approach gains further cal assessment of how funds at the level of the auxil- confirmation in the subject literature, with authors iary administrative sub-unit known as the sołectwo noting the need to bring local people into the pro- (village) were committed, in pursuit of the afore- cess by which development takes place in the differ- mentioned greenspace- (and recreational area-relat- ent areas of operation of units of local-government ed) tasks. The result of that was a classification of administration (Rorat and Tabor, 2014; Mickiewicz the territorial units under study. and Mickiewicz, 2016; Zajda et al., 2017; Karampe- In the present article, the researcher address the la and Kizos, 2018). In the Polish case, such units above issues by investigating greenspace-related – of which there are 2478 – are known as gminas. tasks in the Village Fund of Łódzkie Voivodeship The community-led local development approach gminas’. The main goal of this article is to present began to gain implementation in practice in the ear- the typology of villages using the metrics of the ly 1990s when the European Union brought in its share of greenspace-related tasks in Village Fund LEADER Programme – as followed by later initia- using the properties of the normal distribution tives of a similar kind. Thanks to this, the inclusion curve. Given that the article shows how small proj- of communities resident in different auxiliary units ects in the Village Fund are connected with public of administration, into actions mounted at the local participation in the local development of green ar- level, allowed for inhabitants’ integration; while the eas of rural gminas. projects pursued encouraged a better understand- ing of processes linking up with local development (Zhang and Liao, 2011; Bernaciak and Kopczyński, 2. Theoretical background 2019; Park and Krueger, 2019; Lesniewska-Napier- ala and Napierala, 2020). In Poland, the activity of the kind under consideration here is also provided 2.1. The Village Fund as an instrument allow- for by tasks coming within the framework of Po- ing green space to be established and land’s Village Fund, which takes in undertakings maintained categorised strategically as “gmina-own”. The Fund has as its overriding objective the achievement of improvement in inhabitants’ quality of life. The Village Fund may be regarded as a form of par- Work to study the behaviour of the inhabitants ticipatory budgeting operating at the level of the of Poland’s rural gminas as they utilise the Village auxiliary unit known as the sołectwo, which may be Marcin Feltynowski / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 50(2020): 31–41 33 present within the local-tier administrative divisions the authority involved in the adoption and super- known as gminas. This is a form of funding public vision of measures may decide to establish a sub- tasks that have been in place in Poland since 2009, sidiary auxiliary unit. In Polish law provides could given the adoption at that time of a relevant Village either a sołectwo, or a dzielnica (district of an ur- Fund Act dated February 20th. That Act’s place was ban area), or an osiedla (lowest district of an urban taken by an Act of the same name dating from Feb- area). In the case of rural gminas, inclusion into ruary 21st 2014, and remaining in force through to the structure involves the repeated establishment of the present time. In principle, action taken with- something that also operated in Poland prior to the in the framework of the Fund involves rural areas, country’s systemic change post-1989 (Matyjaszczyk, though it is in fact also possible to identify units 2011). at the sołectwo level that are present within towns The important information associated with the and cities. However, these are cases few in num- Village Fund is that its full cycle of task implemen- ber that does not distort the overall way in which tation lasts three years. This takes in the planning means are redistributed for the purpose of support- of a new development in the sołectwo, the actual ing sołectwo-own tasks. pursuit of whatever undertakings are involved, and As indicated above, an activity engaged in under – in the last year of the three – the reimbursement the Village Fund involves a redistribution of fund- of funds (Fig. 1). Despite the need for funds of the ing. Subsequent reimbursement of means from the gmina to be allocated, and effectively frozen until central budget takes places but depends on the level refund takes place, more and more gminas are de- of wealth characterising the gmina seeking to be re- ciding to make use of the Village Fund. Data from paid. Under the provisions of the Village Fund Act, Statistics Poland and the Ministry of Internal Af- 20, 30 or 40% of funds spent may be subject to re- fairs and Administration make it clear that, in 2018, imbursement. The assumption is naturally that the more than 73% of the gminas further subdivided