Assessment of sustainable development of Klaipeda county

Remiantis surinkta ir išanalizuota teorine bei praktine medžiaga, laikantis sisteminio principo aptartos darnaus vystymosi dimensijos, atliktas darnaus vystymosi Klaipėdos apskrityje vertinimas. Siekiant nustatyti realią Klaipėdos apskrities darnaus vystymosi padėtį rodančią situaciją, siūloma taikyti integruotą darnaus vystymosi indeksą, kuris apimtų ekonominius, ekologinius ir socialinius vystymosi aspektus.The article analyses sustainable development. Traditionally, the concept of sustainable development involves three equivalent components: environmental, economic, and social development; as well as three dimensions of wellbeing, i.e. economic, ecological, and social, and their complex interrelations, including institutional aspects. It is necessary to understand, that the conformity and usage of which to perceive sustainable development is not an easy task, as the three proposed elements of sustainable development have to be equally assessed. Sustainable development is quite a new area; therefore, design of indicators has an important role in defining sustainability itself. Indicators suggested in many other political spheres might be analyzed only if clear and comprehensive understanding of this sphere and its issues exist. Indicators are simple enough tool, which allows evaluating economic, social, and environmental goals of national development. If environmental, social, and economic indicators are integrated into one, they form an index. Integrated indexes show various important qualitative sides of the researched phenomena and at the same time demonstrate how the changes of these indicators in time influence the dynamics of common integrated index change in time. Understanding of sustainable development relations and search for necessary compatibility of ecological, economic and social sphere policies requires innovative methodologies based on new statistical viewpoints. Such a challenge in the measurement of sustainable development is the creation and coordination of new indicators. Standard integrated sustainable development index includes three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental: ISD = a1IEDI + a2ISDI + a3IEI, where: IEDI, ISDI and IEI are respectively the indexes of economic development, social development and environmental state; a1, a2 and a3 – the weights of economic development, social development and environmental state indexes (under the condition: a1 + a2 + a3 = 1), ISD – integrated sustainable development index. There was done assessment of sustainable development of Klaipeda County. The results show that there were negative sustainable development tendencies at Klaipeda County in 2008. Was too much attention is given to the improvement of economic sphere and was forgotten about environmental sphere. Meanwhile the environmental sphere was completely forgotten during the whole analyzed period (2006–2008 years), because the environmental index fell from 33.33 percent (basic value) to -2.98 percent. Summarizing Klaipeda county sustainable development analysis conducted in 2006–2008 it can be noticed that Klaipeda County development was not sustainable, because the greatest attention was paid to economic sphere, totally or partially neglecting environmental sphere