RURAL MIGRATION IN SHKODRA REGION AND ITS IMPACT ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

The relationship between population and environment is as old as the humankind. Environmental changes have always been the cause and the consequence of population movement. The effects of migration as one of the main features of the Albanian population after 1990s are displayed in economic, social or environmental aspects. On one side we face the pressure on land in urban areas and on the other side the abandonment of entire areas in the rural ones. Population movement is a typical feature of everyday life in agricultural context. It can be appeared in the form of permanent or seasonal migration, rural-urban or rural-rural, or even international. Therefore, in recent years more attention is paid to the connection between population change and especially migration, environment and economic development. Environmental changes in the chaotic movements are displayed in the cases of land desertification as a result of their abandoning or construction on agricultural land, deforestation due to logging without any criteria or arson, overuse of inert from river beds or mountain sites, non-selective hunting etc. Migration - displayed in the form of permanent or seasonal migration, is seen as one of the main mechanisms that bring the backwardness of rural areas and the main reason that deepens the gap between regions expecting immigrants and the areas where they leave. Still most nations with the best economic performance over the last 40 years are those with the largest rural to urban migration (Tacoli 2003:2).As a result of migration rural areas loose labor force because the population in working age occupies the highest percentage of emigrants. This includes the most active economic and innovative groups of the population, which means the young and the educated ones. Therefore the negative effects start to appear in decreasing the agricultural productivity and the decline of interest for renewal or modification of rural production system in general. Remittances have come to fall and are used more for consumption spending (e.g. housing construction) than in investments to increase production and rural incomes (e.g. investments in new agricultural technologies that would increase the value of products). Immigrants back in their homeland, when they return from urban areas bring with them, their working experience more convenient for the towns. But there are cases of returnees who use their skills gained in rural areas of developed countries to successfully apply in their farms.