Обзор методических подходов к оценке уровня устойчивого развития и циркулярной экономики

Abstract

At the current development stage of the Russian economy, a global trend towards sustainable development and focusing on solving the environmental issues extensively transforms the current economic linear model. The UN proposes sustainable development as a new future paradigm which determines the solutions for biosphere preservation, less degradation of the natural environment and better social sphere. Circular economy is aimed at introducing sound, environmentally friendly technologies in industry to reduce the consumption of natural resources. The purpose of this article is to determine the links between methodological approaches designed to assess sustainable development and circular economy. The hypothesis of the research is that the implementation of circular economy principles contributes to the achievement of sustainable development goals. The relevancy of these study tasks is conditioned by the need to develop a unified conceptual methodological framework for the theoretical substantiation of the material under study. At the first stage of the research, bibliometric analysis sampled 679 publications from the Scientific Electronic Library eLibrary. At the second stage, the articles which describe methodological approaches to the assessment of circular economy and sustainable development were identified. The indicators used in these methodological approaches are grouped into economic, environmental, and social categories. This helped reveal the link between them by their attribution to the assessment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and circular economy principles. The study shows that the set of indicators for circular economy and sustainable development are mostly consistent with each other, which may confirm the hypothesis of the study. At the same time, the study reveals some principles of circular economy which lack any assessment criteria in the analyzed methodological approaches. The levels of methodological approaches to circular economy were found. The author proposes some areas for improving indicators that can contribute to the implementation of circular economy principles for sustainable development in the economy of the Russian Federation.