Managed Sustainable Development : Classification of Resources and Goods & Services, Calculating Sustainable Growth Rate and The Sustainable Development Index

Macro-level manmade problems can often be best solved by understanding and manipulating the economics behind it. The world today is facing genuine problems of scarcity of resources and environmental & ecological issues in view of intergenerational equity. The paper proposes a new approach of identification and classification of (i) Resources and (ii) Goods and services in the context of sustainable development. Every economy has ambitious economic growth aspirations which are often found conflicting with the commitments on natural resource conservation and climate change obligations. The proposed methodology is a reconciliation of the aspired economic growth of a region and the conservation of the resources and nature. The paper employs contribution of different types of goods and services in the gross domestic product (GDP) of a region to analyze sustainability of development. The important parameters that the paper establishes are Sustainability Ratio (R), Sustainable Growth Rate (SG) and the Sustainable Development Index (SI). These parameters can be used to compare the sustainable development level of different regions. Ensuring natural resource and environmental sustainability will eventually ensure economic sustainability. The paper considers resource depletion concerns as well as the environmental pollutants, biological risks, carbon footprint, warhead proliferation et cetera, thereby ensuring all round sustainability from survival to economic end. The sustainability analysis is done for long periods such as 50 years, 100 years et cetera. The index shows how sustainable the development of an economy is and how sustainability it is growing. The presently much revered GDP growth numbers are directionless, it does not tell the type of growth an economy essentially has. The direction should be sustainability, which the paper stresses upon. An illustration of sustainability analysis of India is also done. Such indices can help identifying sustainably developing economies and could help attracting green investments. If these indices are given priority globally then it can shore up positive sentiments in the green economies