Environment, public utilities

Datasets from the Dissemination Database regarding settlements have been updated with 2021 data, as such settlement related data for 2021 are available since 13 December, concerning, among others, public water and sewerage.

The approximately 500 tables, graphs and maps and tens of thousands of data the Statistical Yearbook of Hungary contains give, for almost one and a half century, an overview of the social and economic processes of the country in the given year. Besides paying attention to the ever changing socio-economic environment and user demands we always strive to share new information: the health chapter broadened this year with indices regarding outpatient care, time series of healthcare expenses, life expectancy in good health and the number of Covid19 infected people.

The amount of waste collected under public waste collection services from the population increased slightly year on year from 2014, reaching over 2.5 million tonnes in 2021. Within this, both the amount (482 thousand tonnes) and the proportion (19%) of separately collected waste rose to record levels. In 2021, as in previous years, Somogy county had the highest rate of separate collection (35%), while Veszprém and Nógrád had the lowest rates (9.4% and 9.6%).

One-fifth (1,948 thousand hectares) of Hungary's area was covered by forest area at the end of 2021. Some six-tenths – nearly 1.2 million hectares – of the forests are used for economic purposes, their proportion showing a slowly decreasing trend. The extent of those serving protective purposes was up from 689 thousand hectares in 2010 to 769 thousand hectares, and their share to 39%, while the area of public welfare forests (thermal forests, park forests, educational forests, experimental forests and wildlife parks) lessened from 21 thousand to 20 thousand hectares (their proportion to 1.0%) in the meantime.

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.