Environment, public utilities

There have been merely five years since 2000 when there has not been a drought in Hungary. At the same time, the proportion of areas exposed to drought reached 80% in six years during these two decades. 2017–2019 were years particularly hit by lack of precipitation. Drought reigned in the spring of 2020, too, yet the more-than-average precipitation in the summer months later on made up for the lack of water for the most part. Drought was seen on 310 thousand hectares in total in 2020, so the proportion of areas exposed to drought was 3.3%.

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro, and gave the impetus to the integration of the concept of sustainable development into national and global policies. In Hungary, the National Sustainable Development Council (NFFT, established in 2007) developed the Hungarian National Sustainable Development Framework Strategy, which was adopted by the Parliament in 2013. The framework strategy aims to provide a nationwide, long-term guide for individual and community action. Compared to the strategy of the European Union or the UN SDGs, the Hungarian framework strategy interprets the concept of sustainability much more narrowly. In this interpretation, sustainable development policy is primarily a long-term resource management activity in which it distinguishes four resources: human, social, natural and economic resources.

The extension of broad-leaved species was up by 2.0% (by 33 thousand hectares), while that of conifers was reduced by 13% (by 28 thousand hectares) between 2010 and 2019, so the stocked forest area as a whole (1.9 million hectares) rose by 5.6 thousand hectares by the end of 2019. Nine-tenths of forests were made up by broad-leaved and one-tenth by coniferous tree species. The growing stock of forests has grown in Hungary every year since the turn of the millennium, to equal 394 million m3 in 2019.

The highest numbers of red deer and fallow-deer in Hungary – due to the growth in the past years – have been recorded for the spring of 2020 (at 119 thousand and 41 thousand, respectively) since the turn of the millennium. The numbers of roe-deer and mouflon slightly, while the number of wild-boars – by reason of the reduction of the stock, as ordered because of the African swine fever – significantly decreased. The stock of small game species diminished in a decade-long perspective, however, this negative trend turned in the last two years, the numbers of hares, pheasants and partridges all rose.