Can Sustainability Be Budget for? Evidence from Iran

Abstract

Sustainability has been interpreted as the fulfillment of current generations’ needs without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. Sustainable development has evolved into an important area of study and has recently entered into governments’ planning and budgeting. This evolution has followed similar pattern in Iran, where the discourse around sustainability and sustainable development in different parts of government and society are increasing. In this chapter, we survey the role of sustainability and its requirements as well as the consequences in macroplanning and budgeting in Iran. For this study, the documents related to budgeting which contain information about sustainability and the way in which sustainability has grown in Iran’s budget preparation are investigated. For this purpose, the Iran’s budget circulars for the 10 years from 2007 to 2016 are reviewed with particular Iran’s attention to the level of sustainability considered. Finally, a picture from budgeting and macroplanning in Iran with the advent of sustainability issues is presented. Sustainability issues like sustainable development and environmental issues have gradually evolved into considering economic, social, and environmental impacts. This chapter will include analysis of all of the three sections. This research will be carried out using content analysis of the documents. Using this method, we are going to investigate, classify, and report the relevant documents. Among the various techniques of content analysis, our study will examine frequency, clusters, and categories. Using these techniques, our aim is to discover sustainability status in Iran’s budget.