Linking Sustainable Development Assessment in Ireland and the European Union with Economic Theory

Assessment of sustainable development based on the capital approach

PurposeHigher education institutions (HEIs) should play a fundamental role in achieving the international 2030 sustainable development (SD) agenda. Quality education is the fourth of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and one of the targets related to this is to ensure that by 2030 all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote SD. Therefore, the SDGs provide a motive for HEIs to integrate SD concepts into their day-to-day practices. This study aims to introduce a framework for HEIs’ sustainable development assessment. Such a framework guides HEIs and educational leaders to support their countries’ commitments to achieving the SDGs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the results of a case study analysis of the role and successful techniques of HEIs in achieving SD in three countries, namely, Germany, Japan and Egypt. Primary data was collected by semi-structured interviews with three Cairo University officials, while secondary data was collected by reviewing the universities' official websites, reports, publications and related papers. This study introduces a novel framework for HEIs' SD analysis and assessment, which guides HEIs and educational leaders to support SD to fulfill their countries' commitments to achieving the SDGs. This framework is based on the following five categories: strategic direction and institutional working practices, supporting students, supporting university staff competencies, supporting society's stakeholders and networking and sustainable campus. Consideration is given to the potential role of HEIs to support SD in each of these areas.FindingsCairo University could learn from the novel and pioneer practices of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and the University of Tokyo to fill in the gaps it has in different roles. It can also put more effort into adopting the suggested higher education programs of Egypt's Vision 2030.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is limited to a case analysis comparing three countries, Germany, Japan and Egypt. Second, this study has not considered school education, which is equally essential in countries' SD.Practical implicationsHEIs can use the framework and the findings in this paper to evaluate their current roles in supporting SD, identify the gaps and take actions accordingly to address their weaknesses.Originality/valueThe paper compares three universities, one in each of the case study countries. It draws conclusions that identify ways in which the paper's framework and findings can guide SD practice in HEIs internationally, especially those in the developing world.

This article is aimed to address the issue of sustainable economic development assessment in family farms. A complex methodology of family farm sustainable economic development assessment based on the family farm sustainable economic development index has been created following analysis of family farm sustainable economic development assessment methodologies, which are proposed by scientists and used in practice. The Kruskal-Wallis test and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to check the relevance of the index in family farm sustainable economic development assessment. The index value range was calculated using descriptive statistics. The characteristics of the index allow creating models for family farm sustainable economic development classification types based on k-means clustering. The family farms were classified into nine types. Examples of Lithuanian family farms were provided to demonstrate practical applications of the index. Furthermore, analysis of Lithuanian family farm sustainable economic development types by specialisation enabled to identify the main reasons for the existing situation in the farms.

Objective: assessment of sustainability and level of environmental balanced development of the Poltava region with justification of approach to the choice of estimated indicators. Methods: a quantitative and qualitative analysis and synthesis, methods of classification and correlation analysis. Results: researched of existing approaches to defining parameters, indexes and indicators related to sustainable development. Chosen and reviewed method for assessment of environmental sustainability and sustainable development proposed by Harmut Bossel. The systematization of indicators and the estimation of sustainability on 14 indicators for Poltava region according to the methodology of Harmut Bossel. Based on the chosen indicators were built “guiding star”, which give a clear understanding of the dynamics of change in each of the subsystems, level of its stability and potential of subsystem to restore. Conclusions: in general, the results of the evaluation according to the methodology of Harmut Bossel showed overall instability of the ecological system of the Poltava region, which is typical for the entire investigated period (2005–2015 years). Based on the evaluation, defined the priority environmental problems that are «weak links» of ecological system and which require urgent focusing, that ensuring gradual stabilization processes in the environmental development of the region.

List of BoxesList of TablesList of ContributorsList of AbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction to Sustainability Assessment at the Local Level, by Dimitri DevuystThe Conundrum of Urban Sustainability, by William E. ReesPart I. Sustainable Development in Urban Areas, by Dimitri Devuyst 1. Sustainable Development in Urban Areas: An Overview, by Rodney R. White2. Local Agenda 21: The Pursuit of Sustainable Development. in Subnational Domains, by William M. Lafferty3. The Eco-City Approach to Sustainable Development in Urban Areas, by Mark Roseland4. Sustainable Development at the Local Level: The North-South Context, by Dimitri DevuystPart II. Urban Sustainability Assessment Tools in the Decision-Making Process ,by Dimitri Devuyst 5. Linking Impact Assessment with Sustainable Development and the Introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment, by Dimitri Devuyst6. Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Decision-Making Process, by Lone Koernoev7. Sustainability Assessment at the Local Level, by Dimitri Devuyst8. Sustainability Assessment in Practice: Case Studies Using the ASSIPAC Methodology, by Dimitri Devuyst9. Direction Analysis: An Example of Municipal Sustainability Assessment in Norway, by Carlo AallPart III. Tools for Setting a Baseline and Measuring Progress in Urban Sustainability Assessment, by Dimitri Devuyst10. Indicators of Sustainable Development, by Thomas van Wijngaarden11. Indicators for Sustainable Development in Urban Areas, by Elizabeth KlineAdditional Examples of the Use of Sustainability Indicators at the Local Level, by Mark Roseland12. Sustainability Reporting and the Development of Sustainability Targets, by Dimitri Devuyst13. Global Change, Ecological Footprints, and Urban Sustainability, by William E. ReesPart IV. Tools for Sustainability Assessment at the Household Level, by Dimitri Devuyst14. Striving for Sustainability via Behavioral Modification at the Household Level: Psychological Aspects and Effectiveness, by Paul Harland and Henk StaatsGlobal Action Plan Research in Switzerland, by Susanne Bruppacher15. Sustainable Lifestyle Assessment, by Dimitri Devuyst and Sofie Van VolsemLinking Sustainability Assessment to a Vision for a Sustainable Future, by Dimitri DevuystIndex

Assessment of coastal zone sustainable development: A case study of Yantai, China

Purpose: Urgency of solving the scientific problem of regional economy connected with the assessment of the productive capacity and economic activity defining the region’s sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach: It is extremely important to evaluate the state of productive capacity and economic activity of the regional social and economic system basing on synthesis of the evolutionary and genetic approach, as well as the spatial approach providing objective identity, classification, visualization and assessment of factor components for the region’s sustainable development. The article gives the assessment results for factor components of the municipal districts’ productive capacity and economic activity; the districts’ spatial variability was also studied. The research result is represented by the methodology for assessing the sustainable development of municipal districts. Findings: The article demonstrates the effectiveness of using themed digital maps providing the visual side of spatial predicted patterns in distributing indexes of productive capacity and economic activity in municipal districts. The key characteristic of the region’s sustainable development assessment is its interdisciplinary nature provided by integration of the evolutionary and genetic, as well as spatial approaches based on contemporary GIS technologies. Originality/value: The results’ scientific value includes the theoretical and methodological explanation for method tools used for reasoning the decisions made in the area of managing the region’s sustainable social and economic development. According to the authors, the spatial approach based on the spatial analysis methods will enable to bring up serious thought on the meaning of the region’s sustainable social and economic development opening up certain perspectives to improve methods and means for regional and municipal management, include spatial analysis methods into the process of making management decisions.

Economic theory on sustainable development suggests that resource-rich countries should reinvest the rents from natural resource extraction in other forms of capital to ensure that future consumption level of the economy can be greater than or at least equal to the level of their current consumption. Several seminal papers in the early 2000s indicated that the correlation between genuine savings and future consumption was weaker than theory predicted, at least when genuine savings were measured using the World Bank estimates. This paper revisits the issue and replicates two of these earlier studies to see whether the correlation has become stronger over time, on the back of policy changes in resource-rich countries and of revisions to the World Bank estimates. The results indicate that the correlation between genuine savings and future consumption growth may be stronger for poorer countries than for richer, and for sub-Saharan Africa, the theoretical predictions appear to hold.

Sustainable development assessment from a capitals perspective: Analytical structure and indicator selection criteria

The significance of acknowledging well-being (WB) has increased in local sustainable development (SD) assessment. Meanwhile, scholars and practitioners have paid growing attention to using subjective indicators which rely on a person’s subjective evaluation to measure SD subjects, due to the frequent critique. The predominant use of objective indicators to assess SD frequently overlooks capturing individual’s and community’s WB. Nevertheless, the scopes and functions of subjective indicators remain underexamined in the SD assessment context. Therefore, this study discusses the distinctive characteristics of subjective sustainable development indicators (SDIs), contrasting with objective SDIs, complemented by examining WB indicators. To this end, an analysis of the literature on indicator-based assessment of SD and WB at the community and local level was conducted. The findings highlighted that the three distinctive approaches of SDIs could optimally capture and address associated WB: the objective SDIs could most sufficiently capture and address material WB capture, which turned, however, the shortcoming that overlooks other dimensions of WB. In contrast, the expert-led subjective SDIs could optimally capture and address community’s social WB, whereby the outcomes reflected social norms and preferences recognised by a community and sustainability theories. Likewise, the citizen-based subjective SDIs distinctly measured individual’s life satisfaction levels, whereby the outcomes explicitly presented individual’s subjective WB while addressing local needs and values. This study finally suggests that the complementary use of the respective SDIs contributes to a thorough local-level SD assessment, by optimally addressing associated WB, which ultimately helps meet the current and future generations’ WB in achieving local SD.

Although resource rich, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has in general been characterised by poor economic performance and widespread poverty. The region is, however, now poised to enjoy high levels of growth and is increasingly attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). However, it is important to determine the sustainability of this development path. Given the lack of research on sustainability in the context of SSA, this study attempts to bridge this gap. A capital approach is adopted using the genuine savings (GS) rate computed by the World Bank, a measure of weak sustainability. GS endeavour to assess the sustainability path of countries, based on how ‘well’ they manage their total capital stock through the difference between consumption in natural capital and counter-balancing investments in other forms of man-made capital, namely physical and human. Since GS is based on the assumption of perfect resource substitutability, it can be taken as a limit value of sustainability whereby a country experiencing a positive value of GS is deemed to be weakly sustainable. This article thus aims to investigate whether SSA is on a sustainable development path and the factors affecting GS for this sample of countries. This study looks at a panel data set of 30 SSA countries over a period of 35 years. The fixed, random as well as dynamic effects are taken into account using System-GMM. In particular, improving institutional quality in the countries considered in the sample could directly and significantly improve their weak sustainability. JEL Classification: O11, Q01, B22, C23

Assessing regional sustainable development through an integration of nonlinear principal component analysis and Gram Schmidt orthogonalization

Constructing a standard system of city sustainable development assessment technology based on the SDGs

Significance of environment in the assessment of sustainable development: The case for south west Victoria

This study used a bibliometric analysis of 110 scientific papers published between 2002 and 2022 to overview the publication trends and growth potential of sustainable agricultural development assessment studies. The findings showed that the collaboration between authors and institutions was not strong, the journals published were relatively scattered, the coverage of disciplines was wide, more papers were published in higher impact journals, and the authors of the sample articles were mostly from Asian and European countries, the co-citation analysis pointed out more influential authors and journals. The temporal evolution of the keywords identified that researchers focused more on the sustainable operation of agriculture and the methods to assess the degree of sustainability initially, as research progressed and more scientific methods were applied, recent agricultural sustainability research focused on environmental impacts and economic efficiency. According to statistical analysis, the primary level is mostly carried out in three dimensions (economic, social, and environmental), with reference to this principle, this paper summarized the specific indicators appearing in the sample articles and divided them into three subgroups. The results showed that the indicators were selected from a wide range of sources, the entropy weight method and Analytic Hierarchy Process were the most frequent methods of assigning weights to indicators. The present study concludes that the sustainable agricultural development assessment studies are still immature, there is still much room for research on the application of sustainability assessment theory to agrarian systems.