Sustainable economic–environmental planning in Southeast Europe – beyond‐GDP and climate change emphases

This study's objectives are (1) application of a quantitatively sound approach to the evaluation of economic and environmental sustainability for 10 Southeast Europe (SEE) countries, including comparison with the developed countries of Germany, France and the Russian Federation, and (2) evaluation of the effects of chosen sustainability indicator weights, especially of the GDP‐PPP, climate change and the income equality Gini index, as sustainability parameters. One applied scenario is with the level of sustainable economic development assessed by a traditional approach, based on high weight of GDP‐PPP, and another assigns lesser weight to the GDP‐PPP and higher weight to natural wealth and income equality, i.e. a ‘beyond‐GDP’ goal. The sustainability of environmental development was determined by a common approach based on high importance of climate change indicators and an approach, perhaps more suitable for developing countries of SEE, that gives higher weight to their agriculture, forestation and energy usage. Assigning higher weights to natural wealth and social equality encouragingly demonstrated that this results in the same or higher sustainability rankings for the SEE countries, and for some even higher than those of the developed countries. Developing countries that have relatively low GHG emissions and energy use, and GDP well above the poverty level, should consider basing their sustainable development on raising the relative weights for natural wealth and income equality, and lowering it for the GDP. Methodology recommendations are offered to sustainable development planners and policy‐makers. Uniformity and scientific consensus‐based standardization of sustainability analysis methodology are critically needed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment