Search

The concept of sustainable development (SD) is broad and moreover, it is often interchangeably used with the more general, but sometimes also more specific, concept of sustainability. The concept of SD is analysed on the basis on its development (analysed in the first part: Drastichová, 2022) and relationships with sustainability and related scientific (theoretical) and practical concepts. The rationale behind this work lies in clarifying the meaning of SD, including the concept of sustainability, and, on the basis of this, identifying the main ways of moving closer towards the aims of SD, including quality of life and wellbeing. The limitations of the concept are identified and summarized, as are the alternatives to SD and sustainability. The rationale behind this work lies not only in the clarifying of the SD concept, but also in the normative evaluation of this concept in relation to the wellbeing and quality of life of the Earth’s population for an infinite time period, while maintaining the supply of ecosystem services which the planet provides, taking into account that these resources are not only a source of people’s wellbeing, but are essential for people’s survival in general. Hence, this work includes an in-depth sophisticated consideration of the SD concept based on its historical development, as well as normative assessments of the concept resulting from this knowledge. Alternative concepts and the possibilities of sustain-ability science are also summarized. A significant effort has been made to identify the relationships of the SD concept with sustainability and to the main related scientific (theoretical) and practical concepts, as well as to the alternative concepts to them. These outcomes were again obtained from a detailed analysis of history and relevant scientific works. Finally, a possible design of the SD concept is outlined on the basis of the analysis and synthesis of the knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work focuses on the origin, the history and milestones that led to the conceptualization of sustainable development (SD). Not only is the concept of SD broad, but it is often used interchangeably with the more general (but sometimes also more specific) concept of sustainability. The concept of SD is analysed based on its development and relationships with sustainability and related scientific (theoretical) and practical concepts. The rationale behind this work lies in clarifying the meaning of SD, including the concept of sustainability, and, on the basis of this, identifying the main ways of moving closer towards the aims of SD, including quality of life and wellbeing. The limitations of the concept are identified and summarized, as are the alternatives to SD and sustainability. The rationale behind this work lies not only in the clarifying of the SD concept, but also in the normative evaluation of this concept in relation to the wellbeing and quality of life of the Earth’s population for an infinite time period, while maintaining the supply of ecosystem services which the planet provides, taking into account that these resources are not only a source of people’s wellbeing, but are essential for people’s survival in general. Hence this work includes an in-depth sophisticated consideration of the SD concept based on its historical development, with a focus on the most crucial milestones, as well as normative assessments of the concept resulting from this knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work focuses on the evaluation of the factors of quality of life in a sample of 26 countries. Quality of life is a complex, multidimensional concept, which includes various social, cultural, economic, political, demographic and environmental aspects. Regarding this, principal component analysis and regression analysis were chosen as relevant methods to analyse relationships among twenty-five variables related to quality of life, and their relationships with three composite indices reflecting crucial aspects of quality of life, wellbeing and sustainability. These indices, applied as the response variables in the regression analysis, include the inequality-adjusted alternative of the Human Development Index (IHDI), the Happy Planet Index (HPI), and Healthy Life Years (HLY). The IHDI represents an objective indicator of human development and wellbeing. HLY reflects quality of life in terms of health. The HPI combines the ecological efficiency with which human wellbeing is delivered, while it also includes a subjective measure of wellbeing. Since each of these indices represent different aspects of quality of life to a certain extent, some of the factors (represented by selected indicators) affected them in different ways. After applying a Lasso regression, nine of the 25 indicators – representing crucial factors of quality of life – were identified. Homicide rate (representing the factor of safety) affected all three indices in a negative way, whereas Years in education (representing the factor of education) and Life satisfaction – a subjective indicator of wellbeing representing the dimension of the same name, affected them positively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The type of health system in each country and the resources devoted to it determine its outcomes. Relationships between ratios of expenditure to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) classified by provider and indicators reflecting health outcomes in 2015 are examined for 30 countries by means of a compositional data analysis and a regression analysis. The countries in the sample are the European Union (EU-28) countries plus Iceland and Norway. The outcome indicators used are life expectancy at birth (LE); healthy life years in absolute value at birth for females (HLYf) and for males (HLYm); and death rate due to chronic diseases (DR) (response variables). The results indicate that the higher the ratio of expenditure on retailers and other providers of medical goods in relation to other types of expenditure in the composition, the higher the DR indicator and the lower the LE indicator. The ratio of expenditure on residential long-term care facilities in the composition seems to have had a positive effect on both HLY indicators. The effect of expenditure ratios on providers of healthcare system administration and financing is not straightforward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set replaced the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) in 2017. The selected indicators of this set were chosen for the analysis to classify the sample of the 28 EU countries along with Norway according to their performance in sustainability. In the selection of indicators, priority was given to the indicators reflecting the social dimension of SD, along with important representatives of the economic, ecological and institutional dimensions of SD generally. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were applied to the data of 12 indicators in the period 2012-2016. By means of the HCA, four clusters were created in each year of the period 2012-2016 using the indicator values of particular years and then using all the indicator values in all the monitored years for the general assignment of countries to particular clusters. According to changes in the assignment to particular clusters over the years, the sustainability of development and the path of SD in the examined countries are assessed. As regards the core countries of each cluster, cluster 1 includes the most developed EU countries and is thus evaluated as the best performing cluster. Cluster 2 including the least developed EU countries is evaluated as the worst performing cluster. Cluster 3 predominantly includes the transitive economies and it is evaluated as the second best performing cluster according to the indicators applied. Cluster 4 containing the Southern countries is assessed as the second worst performing cluster. From the shifts of countries that occurred between the years, the shift of Ireland from cluster 3 to cluster 1 in 2013 must be emphasised as the move towards higher sustainability. The shift of Slovakia and Hungary from cluster 2 to cluster 3 in 2013 is also evaluated as progress towards higher sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a significant threat to sustainable development (SD). Using the Log-Mean Divisia Index Method (LMDI) a decomposition of the data on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the European Union (EU) in 2000-2013 is carried out. To detect if decoupling of the environmental variable represented by the GHG emissions from the economic variable represented by the GDP was taking place in the EU economy, the changes of the GHG emissions were divided into three effects. These factors include the economic activity (scale), the composition or structure of the EU economy with respect to the countries, and GHG intensity of the countries. The aim of the paper is to detect if decoupling of the GHG emissions from the GDP development in the EU took place and to detect the factors of this development. The intensity effect was mainly responsible for the reduction of the GHG emissions in the EU while the scale effect contributed to their increase. The role of the composition effect was only marginal; however, it was positive. As the intensity effect often showed the high negative values, the total effect was often negative as well, which means that decoupling of GHG emissions from GDP took place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regionální Studia is the property of University of Economics, Prague and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)