Page 101 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Saulė Augaitytė: Sustainability aspect of economic development

1. Introduction

Nowadays existing model of public production and consumption is not sustainable. We

meet the proves of that in our daily lives, including climate change, decreased biological

diversity, increased global migration flows to welfare countries, etc. We constantly are facing
increasing gaps in economic and social well-being among different countries, but also inside of

them. In such a situation there is no alternative to sustainable development, as it includes three
main approaches: economic, social and environmental. The major purpose of sustainable

development is to find optimal level of interaction between three systems – biological and
natural resources system, economic and social systems. The major issue stands, therefore, for

how we could create sustainable society or achieve sustainable development.

The huge variety of views on what should be considered sustainable exists. Even in scientific
works sustainable development is differently understood and described. As a result, the wide range

of aspects covered by the concept of sustainability converts it to the object of discussions. That
clearly indicates for all of us today sustainability being the most actual social, economic and

ecological problem. And this derives from some theorethical and practical aspects. First of all, the
concept of sustainable development is very undefined. Secondly, exist different opinions on the

effectiveness and implementation of sustainable development assessment methods.

The main objectives of the paper are:
- to reveal the diversity of sustainability concept and to define sustainable development;

- to discover the cohesion between sustainability and economic development;
- to present the challenges and perspectives of sustainable development and, to suggest

the measures fostering sustainable development.

Methods of reserach: systematic review of scientific literature, common and logical
analysis, comparative and abstract analysis.

2. The concept of sustainability and its objectives
The idea of sustainable development grew from numerous envirnonmental movements in

earlier decades. The so called Brundtland Commission (United Nations,1987) considered the

neglect of interdependences among nature, economy and society as the principal cause of
persistent policy failures in both environment and development. The success of this report was

determined by the fact, that developed and developing countries had the opportunity to express
their thoughts. Developed countries expressed their concerns about environment and long term

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