Geographical indicators of sustainable development and assessment of the impact on the environment

Abstract

The indicators of sustainable development are the indices used to evaluate and show the levels and trends of national, regional and global development. The analysis of such indicators is used to forecast the peculiarities of political, economic, social and ecological development of the geographical environment. There are many examples of designing and determining the indicators of sustainable development known today, which have been actively considered since the Rio Conference of 1992. For example, under the UNO Development Programme, the social indicator of sustainable development is the human potential development index, which incorporates such indices, as a person’s expected lifetime (by the moment of his birth), level of education of the adult population and size of the gross domestic product per capita. Presently, the geographical (environmental) indicators of sustainable development are considered to be: Level of degradation of land, water, atmospheric air, plants and animals, eco-systems and landscapes; Scales of using the natural resources; Scales of ecological policy and landscape planning and realization; Outcomes of realization of the national environmental legislation and international conventions; Indicators of the science and education involvement in the study of the environmental problems and realization of the study outcomes; Level of the population environmental consciousness and awareness.