A Cross – Sectional Analysis of Environmetal Sustainability Practices

A Cross – Sectional Analysis of Environmetal Sustainability Practices

Toksari , Murat

In 1970s and 1980s the concept of sustainability developed as a process of protection for the elements that social, economic and eceological systems need. During the Environment and Development Summit held in 1992, decisions were made about the works to protect and improve the environmental sustainability with the help of objective policies. By revealing sustainability specifically focuses on the social, economic and ecological target, Brountland report states that meeting Socia-Economic needs is limited to the carrying capacity of ecosystem. Environmental sustainability is divided into three categories. They are resource management, energy management and product sustainability. While, solid waste and water conservation compose the resource managament, energy managament includes energy conservation, renewable energy, GHG emission reduction, energy sufficient. Finally, product sustainability involves product transportation, supply chain audit, product stewardship and Life Cycle Program. In this context, environmental sustainability index and environmental performance index were prepared by the universities of Yale and Colombia. With environmental sustainability index, it is intented to reach perfection in the current and future environmental qualities of the countries. This index, is a tool when aiming to be qualified and is an important mechanism for testing the environmental performance. As for environmental performance index, it has been developed by using result-oriented indicators. In this study, the countries whose performances enter the scope of the environmental performance index were compared, 142 countries in 2002 and 146 countries in 2005 were included in this index. Keywords: Sustainability, environmental performance index, environmental sustainability index, Turkey

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-31

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