Macro Sustainability across Countries: Key Sector Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis

Stanislav Shmelev,Harrison Roger Brook

doi:10.3390/su132111657

Abstract

When formulating economic development strategies, the environment and society must be considered to preserve well-being. This paper proposes a comparative sustainability assessment method using environmentally extended input-output analysis and multi-criteria decision aid. Using symmetric input-output tables and sectoral CO2 emissions and employment data for six countries, linkage coefficients are calculated for 163 sectors in each country. Multi-criteria decision aid tool, ELECTRE III, is used to derive outranking relationships among each country’s sectors using these coefficients as criteria, resulting in a hierarchy of sectors ordered by sustainability. Sectors that frequently appear at the top of the six hierarchies included education, health care, construction, and financial intermediation. China’s results differ significantly because of its concentration of economic activity on the primary/secondary sectors. The results can enable identification of key intervention pathways along which sustainable development could be stimulated. Country-specific recommendations and reflections on economic and sustainability policy initiatives are discussed.

Highlights

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to sustainable economic development that can be applied to every country, region, and city in the world
There are large bodies of existing literature for EE Input-output analysis (I-O) and MCDA, and this study aims to make a valuable contribution to that body of work by performing a comparative macro sustainability analysis using the novel framework which combines both key sector identification using EE I-O and MCDA in this manner
Sectors appearing most frequently at the bottom of the MCDA hierarchies in these countries are generally those associated with electricity production using fossil fuels and extractive industries, mining of metals and ores

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editors: Nuno Crespo and Adam Smoliński. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to sustainable economic development that can be applied to every country, region, and city in the world. In the face of anthropogenic climate change, depletion of natural resources, dependence on fossil fuels, loss of biodiversity, and worsening socio-economic inequality; every region that intends to address these issues must tailor its sustainable development strategy in a way that considers its own unique set of economic, social, and environmental circumstances. Environmental protection and social well-being are global, not localized, issues that can only be effectively addressed in an international, coordinated manner. Global initiatives have been designed and undertaken to align different nations’ sustainable development efforts towards agreed-upon goals, most notably and recently the 2015 Paris Agreement, which has been signed by 195 countries

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion