Search

Sustainable development as a concept that aims to enhance the quality of life without affecting environment has been in focus in European policies since the last decade of 20th century. The objectives of EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) are grouped into ten thematic areas, where almost each theme has at least one headline and several operational sustainable development indicators (SDIs). A large number of SDIs is needed to evaluate all EU SDS goals, which imposes the use of multivariate data mining techniques. This paper presents an empirical study carried out to assess the sustainability performance of European countries using the differential multi criteria analysis (DMCA) technique. The PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization MeTHod for Enrichment Evaluations) was applied on 38 headline and operational SDIs defined under the EU SDS. This DMCA was applied to 30 European countries over a 10-year period (2004–2014) with the aim to determine the theme specific, as well as, overall sustainability progress. The DMCA reveals that the majority of European countries have made progress in sustainability in the studied period, where Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Sweden, have enhanced their sustainability performance concerning all themes. There are only two countries, namely Greece and Ireland, which have not made overall progress in this period. Also, above the average progress has been made concerning social inclusion, sustainable transport, and climate change and energy, while in all other themes additional efforts should be made in order to ensure sustainable performance progress in future years. Although the progress in reducing uneven development between EU members has been made, after 2009 a positive trend can be observed only in a limited number of SDS themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development has become one of the burning issues on a global, local and individual levels as a result of climate changes, pollution, rapid development and changes in the global information, economic, industrial and business sectors and value systems. In this sense, education for sustainable development, as part of lifelong learning, has become one of the most important strategic and educational policy issues in Serbia. The aim of this paper is to highlight the potential of geography as a school subject, with special reference to the role of the subject matter of geoheritage and geodiversity in education for sustainable development. The aim of pointing the benefits of integrated and out-of-classroom approaches in teaching geography, which favour an active, experiential and exploratory approach to learning about geodiversity and geoheritage, is that students can acquire competencies in sustainable development. As outcomes of geography classes, competencies also represent a basis for raising awareness and increasing accountability and responsibility in individuals for preserving geoheritage and geodiversity as part of the Serbian national treasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change research is currently a topic of great interest for economic researchers. In particular, environmental input–output analysis increasingly plays an important role in measuring the economic and environmental effects of sustainable development policies in Europe. Other approaches also exist, such as econometric modelling, in which impacts are quantified on statistical grounds and with certain desirable properties (efficient estimates, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, etc.) that are not found in the input–output approach. Consequently, this paper merges the two approaches to address the calculation of unbiased and consistent carbon dioxide emission multipliers for Denmark and their respective confidence intervals. The use of the supply and use system instead of the symmetric input–output table also presents the opportunity to avoid the common problems associated with the construction of technical coefficients (technology assumptions, negatives, etc.). Moreover, a new policy-relevant application of these multipliers is introduced: the quantification of the performance of the carbon dioxide emission reductions carried out by industries via external trading. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]