Integrated assessment of sustainable development: Lithuanian case

The problem of the article is that circle of indicators and indexes suitable for assessment of sustainable development is not well-defined. In the article we are putting stress on indicators and indexes. The following objectives have been formulated: to provide a systematic view of the sustainable development assessment methods, to provide the methodology of integrated sustainable development index and to provide sustainable development assessment for Lithuanian case. The article was prepared using systematic scientific literature analysis, general and logical analysis, comparative and summarization methods and practical experience with sustainable development. The applied research takes quantitative research methods: a form with a digital scale, an evaluation of data in percentage, an arithmetical average. During the last two decades efforts have been laid to develop indicators for practical assessment of how sustainable development of states is. In order to measure effectiveness of national sustainable development strategy and environmental policy from the viewpoint of colonization of individual sectored policies, indicators involving the following should be used: a) social and economic indicators; b) indicators of changes in environmental quality and pressures; c) indicators of national and public activity. Later the article presents an calculation example of the Lithuania's integrated sustainable development indicator during the period of 2000–2009 as a potential calculation variant