Abstract:

This study attempts to analyse, for selected years from 2005 to 2020, the trends in investment expenditure on environmental protection and water management in rural areas in Poland. The structure and dynamics of changes in these expenses were analysed. The study showed that the dominant part of environmental and water management investments in rural Poland was allocated to collective sanitation. A relatively smaller part of these expenditures was allocated to investments in collective sewage systems, collective sewage treatment plants, water treatment plants and individual rural sewage treatment plants, while a relatively small part of these expenditures was allocated to investments in landfills in rural areas. An analysis of the structure of these expenditures by sources of financing showed that the largest amount of funds came from the budgets of local governments, followed by the European Union Structural Funds, environmental protection and water management funds, own funds of rural residents and other sources, and the least from the state budget. The results of the study indicate an upward trend in investment spending on environmental protection and water management in rural areas in Poland. However, these expenditures are subject to periodic fluctuations, as shown by the polynomial trend line and the corresponding equations.