Requirements and Issues with Implementing SEA as a Sustainable Development Instrument in Ukraine - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 137

The concept of sustainable development achieved its moral, political and legal
status at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio
de Janeiro (1992). At the Conference it was declared that there is a direct interde-
pendence between the level of social and economic development of society and
the state of the environment, and the means for providing sustainable development
were defined as: complementary and mutually supportive integration of three
components - economic growth, social development and protection of the envi-
ronment (UN 1993, pp. 3-8). Without dwelling on the analysis of numerous inter-
pretations of this approach, we understand it as a balanced management of social
and economic development, which, at the same time preserves natural resources
and secures quality of the environment for current and future generations.
The politics of sustainable development aims to solve a number of issues by fa-
cilitating the implementation of methods for: poverty reduction, achieving sustain-
able patterns of consumption and production, enhancing efficiency in environ-
mental protection and the rational use of natural resources. These tasks are
complex and long-term and they can, in addition, cause conflicts of interests be-
tween different social groups. Therefore, as is stated in chapter 40 of the Agenda
21, development management requires appropriate information, assessment tools
and indicators (UN 1993, pp. 473-479).
Instruments aiding sustainable development aim to influence the system of so-
cial relations with the purpose of keeping and increasing the potential of social
and economic development, while at the same time, maintaining and improving
the quality of the environment.
The application of instruments aiding sustainable development presupposes that
there are certain assessment criteria or indicators available: “Indicators of sustain-
able development need to be developed to provide a solid basis for decision-
making at all levels and to contribute to a self-regulating sustainability of inte-
grated environment and development systems” (UN 1993, p. 473).
Resolution 2 of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannes-
burg emphasises that each country has: the primary responsibility for its own sus-
tainable development, makes its own decisions about instruments and methods for
achieving it and ensures efficiency of legislation and availability of the necessary
infrastructure (UN 2002). Moreover, countries with transitional economies (such
as Ukraine) can have objective difficulties and peculiarities in their approaches to
realisation of the new social model (i.e. sustainable development). Past experience
and practice reveals that traditional methods of development are ineffective in
achieving sustainability, especially in terms of long-term effect (Costanza et al.
1991).
As is well known, only at the end of the seventies did most counties begin to
outline the transition from the policy of mitigating the consequences of environ-
mental damage to the policy of precaution and prevention of adverse impacts. A
number of countries started to test and evaluate the economic instruments of envi-
ronmental governance, some of them proved to be very effective (e.g. taxes for
pollution of water bodies in the Netherlands or the experience of the US in regu-
lating emissions to the atmosphere). Currently, the whole spectrum of economic,
legal, institutional and administrative instruments aiding sustainability is well de-