Abstract
Applying sustainable development into practice is an important national and regional policy goal in Slovenia; in addition, the country’s membership in the European Union further commits it to the goals of sustainable development. The research presented in this article is based on the use of a set of 32 economic, social and environmental indicators of sustainable development and the calculation of a synthetic indicator of sustainable regional development for all twelve Slovenian NUTS-3 regions in the period 2015–2019. In the final step, a synthetic assessment of the possibilities for implementing sustainable development in individual Slovenian regions is given, in which regions are classified into four different types. A comparison with the previous five-year period showed that Slovenia achieved progress in most of the socio-economic aspects of sustainable development analyzed, while the situation deteriorated with respect to environmental aspects. The largest differences among Slovenian regions were calculated in the economic area, and the smallest in the environmental area, which is also in line with the findings of previous research. There continues to be a development divide between the more prosperous western part of the country and the eastern part, which lags behind and for the most part also has poorer prospects for sustainable development. This trend is unfavorable for the balanced as well as sustainable development of Slovenian regions.
Highlights
For Europe, the second decade of the 21st century was a time of instability
Of central interest was the question of whether Slovenian regions are making long-term progress towards the goals of sustainable development, or whether they may even be backsliding relative to their starting position
To study the economic aspect of sustainable development in Slovenian regions, six indicators were selected that enable monitoring of the prospects for ensuring the material well-being of the population in the present and in the future
Summary
For Europe, the second decade of the 21st century was a time of instability We entered it still experiencing the impact of the global financial and economic crisis, which shook economic and social systems alike, and ended it with the COVID-19 pandemic, which reminded us that our health and prosperity depend on environmental processes. The preliminary process was lengthy and fraught with many obstacles, reaching back to the United Nations Conference in Rio de Janeiro and the adoption of Agenda 21 (1992) and the first definition of sustainable development by the Brundtland Commission (Our Common Future, 1987), as well as to the first environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972, where discussions on the interaction of developmental and environmental aspects were still very limited, but this was a key event for the emergence of a discourse on sustainable development and for the promotion of environmental issues in international politics (Elliot, 2013). Sustainable development with set goals is normative, as it dictates a comprehensive view of a good society that is economically successful while being socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable and well-governed (Sachs, 2015, p. 12)
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