Abstract

The aim of the article. The sustainable development indicators perform an essential function of incorporating knowledge about the development of human society into decision-making at all stages from planning and application to evaluation of policy impacts. The article devoted to analysis of sustainable development indicators (SDI) evolution and peculiarities of designing the set of SDI for Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and other countries. It is illustrated that sustainable countries demonstrate success in economic and social development and in institutional support of developing. The necessity of unified set of sustainable development indicators for planning and evaluation is stressed. The results of the analysis. The paper provides an overview of evolution and application experience of sustainability measuring practice. Researchers analyze the directions of measurement approach progress. Modern trends of indicators’ using are explored. The research proofed that the more commonly used nowadays frameworks for evaluation sustainability of human development are Pressure-State-Response (PSR) and its variations, limited mostly to the environmental pillar; human well-being/ecosystem well-being; issue or theme based frameworks; and capital accounting based frameworks, centered on the economic and environmental pillar of sustainable development. Research identified the complexity of overview of the large variety of national and international programs of compiling and publishing social, environmental and sustainable development indicators. It concluded that in general these programs include some or all of the following topics: population (growth, migration, refugees); human needs (health, food, housing, education, equity, security, etc.); renewable and non-renewable natural resources; environmental quality (air, water, land); ecosystems (acidification, eutrophication, biodiversity); economic sectors (and their impacts, including emissions, natural resource use, production and consumption patterns, technologies);  natural and man-made disasters; global environmental problems (climate change, ozone layer depletion); globalization; institutions. Conclusions and directions of further researches. From assessment of current status of sustainable development indicators authors reveal the main challenges in defining an appropriate set of them. The ways of overcoming the lack of harmonization in variety of conceptual and organizational frameworks used by the different countries are viewed. Authors consider the direction of SDI system modernization. The importance of sustainable development measuring at different scale levels: local, regional, enterprise and household levels – is stressed. Researchers reveal the main task in division of responsibilities of national authorities managing data quality and data accessibility. An additional challenge of providing better analysis of cross linkages between indicators is pointed out.

Keywords: sustainable development, environmental policy, indicators, assessment, pressure – state –response model, data accessibility

JEL Classification: O29, Q56, K10.

Cite as: Zharova L. & Eremeeva, N. (2016). Sustainable development assessment through indicators evolving. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 1, 224-235. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2016.1-19

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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