Since the report of the World Committee in 1987 “Our Common
Future” (Brundtland et al., 1987) the idea of Sustainable Development had
conquered the minds of the scientists and politicians all over the world and
changed the perception of the development vectors for the leading
companies. The idea – revolutionary in 1987 – was so splendid in its
significance, orientation and scale, that more and more people became the
adepts of the new theory, and becoming the adepts they started to criticize
it

Shvindina, Hanna Oleksandrivna

Швиндина, Анна Александровна

Швіндіна, Ганна Олександрівна

Electronic Sumy State University Institutional Repository

 1   Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine Sumy State University Oleh Balatsky Academic and Scientific Institute of Finance, Economics and Management  22nd International Scientific Conference "Economics for Ecology" ISCS'2016  Економіка для екології  Матеріали XXII Міжнародної наукової конференції  (Україна, Суми, 11–12 травня 2016 року)     Суми  Сумський державний університет 2016       94  SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, DELAY OR REGRESS?  Hanna Shvindina Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine  Since the report of the World Committee in 1987 “Our Common Future” (Brundtland et al., 1987) the idea of Sustainable Development had conquered the minds of the scientists and politicians all over the world and changed the perception of the development vectors for the leading companies. The idea – revolutionary in 1987 – was so splendid in its significance, orientation and scale, that more and more people became the adepts of the new theory, and becoming the adepts they started to criticize it. Among all the problems with the Sustainable Development concept, which are presented at paper of Beckerman (Beckerman, 1994), I’d focus on the problem of implementation and practice of it. The practice embraces all the activities on defining the concept, establishing goals, creating indicators and asserting values. An of course, it includes “developing social movements, organizing institutions, crafting sustainability science and technology, and negotiating the grand compromise among those who are principally concerned with nature and environment, those who value economic development, and those who are dedicated to improving the human condition” (Kates et al, 2005).  But in fact, the big companies choose to reallocate the resources and production sites to the countries of third world or with a weak and unaware government. For example, social movement against the GMO production and the producer Monsanto, in particular (Humanite.fr, 2015), brought the France’s refusal to produce GMO products in the 21 regions (21 regions declared free GMO zone). And as a result, “Monsato” – global producer and trader of GMO seeds in the world, known by its destructive impact on the environment and economics in many countries, - offers the support of the sustainable development programs for the communities and social entrepreneurship in Ukraine, as from 2013 the resources are reallocated (official site of Monsato). These failures of the system and “fake sustainability” shook the faith into the morality of the sustainable development.  And now the sustainable development fashion led to unfavorable results, such as promotion by the big companies of the green or BIO labels  95  as healthier products, which are not. Using the law of informational asymmetry, the producers try to increase the sales in that way. As for the National strategy for Sustainable Development in Ukraine (Sustainable Development Strategy of Ukraine – 2020), I would say that it is artificial construction, which was made for declaration, not for the realization. This is in fact government program of crisis-management steps, but the interests of communities and business are ignored. It does not correspond to the definition of the strategy, and does not meet the criterions of sustainability. There are no measurement tools which are recommended to use for understanding, are we there yet? Did we reach the goal? For example, the strategy has 25 indicators, and among them – No 16, where it’s written “the life expectancy by World Bank calculations will increase by 3 years” [ibid]. How? The response is below: “The means of the strategy are the preconditions of the strategy implementation through the social contract between institutions, business and community” [ibid].  However, I strongly believe that Sustainable Development Strategy is reality and it’s achievable for our country, but now I should admit that there is a delay in sustainability, or rather to say – a regress. All the decisions on Sustainable Development need to be made by the actors, who are strongly concern and responsible for its realization. It becomes possible under conditions of the decentralization of the state power and distribution of bigger authorities to the communities or municipal forces to the city and regional levels. The dialogue between scholars and practitioners, big companies representatives and representatives of social movements is the source of the future rational decisions and future sustainable results.   References: 1. Beckerman, W. (1994). 'Sustainable Development': Is it a Useful Concept? Environmental values, 3(3), 191-209. 2. Brundtland, G., Khalid, M., Agnelli, S., Al-Athel, S., Chidzero, B., Fadika, L. & Singh, M. (1987). Our Common Future (\'Brundtland report\'). 3. Kates, R. W., Parris, T. M., & Leiserowitz, A. A. (2005). What is sustainable development?. Environment, 47(3), 8. 4. Sustainable Development Strategy of Ukraine [Stratehija staloho rozvytku "Ukrajina - 2020"], available at: http://zakon5.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/5/2015 5. Manisfestations anti-Monsanto en France et dans le monde // Samedi, 25 Mai, 2013, Humanite.fr. Available at : http://www.humanite.fr/manisfestations-anti-monsanto-en-france-et-dans-le-monde  96  6. Ukraine is the granary of the Future [Ukrajina – žytnycja majbutn’oho] / Official site of Monsato in Ukraine. Available at: http://www.monsanto.com/global/ua/ourcommitments/pages/grain-basket.aspx    APPROACHES TO MANAGING CORPORATE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY  Denys Smolennikov Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine  There are several managerial approaches that can be applied for social and environmental responsibility issues: functional, system, process, integrated, administrative, situational, marketing and program approach.                Figure 1 – The main managerial approaches to corporate environmental responsibility  Functional approach to managerial decision-making considers the business firm from the position of its basic function. Social and environmental responsibility functions can be assigned to one or more structural units and they will be responsible not only for creating a report on social and environmental responsibility, but also for its implementation. Approaches to managing CSER functional system process integrated administrative program situational marketing 

Sustainable development, delay or regress?

SocioEconomic Challenges Journal (Sumy State University)

 1 
 
 
Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine 
Sumy State University 
Oleh Balatsky Academic and Scientific Institute of Finance, 
Economics and Management 
 
22nd International Scientific Conference 
"Economics for Ecology" 
ISCS'2016 
 
Економіка для екології 
 
Матеріали 
XXII Міжнародної наукової конференції 
 
(Україна, Суми, 11–12 травня 2016 року) 
 
 
 
 
Суми  
Сумський державний університет 
2016      
 94 
 
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, DELAY OR REGRESS? 
 
Hanna Shvindina 
Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine 
 
Since the report of the World Committee in 1987 “Our Common 
Future” (Brundtland et al., 1987) the idea of Sustainable Development had 
conquered the minds of the scientists and politicians all over the world and 
changed the perception of the development vectors for the leading 
companies. The idea – revolutionary in 1987 – was so splendid in its 
significance, orientation and scale, that more and more people became the 
adepts of the new theory, and becoming the adepts they started to criticize 
it. 
Among all the problems with the Sustainable Development concept, 
which are presented at paper of Beckerman (Beckerman, 1994), I’d focus 
on the problem of implementation and practice of it. 
The practice embraces all the activities on defining the concept, 
establishing goals, creating indicators and asserting values. An of course, it 
includes “developing social movements, organizing institutions, crafting 
sustainability science and technology, and negotiating the grand 
compromise among those who are principally concerned with nature and 
environment, those who value economic development, and those who are 
dedicated to improving the human condition” (Kates et al, 2005).  
But in fact, the big companies choose to reallocate the resources and 
production sites to the countries of third world or with a weak and unaware 
government. For example, social movement against the GMO production 
and the producer Monsanto, in particular (Humanite.fr, 2015), brought the 
France’s refusal to produce GMO products in the 21 regions (21 regions 
declared free GMO zone). And as a result, “Monsato” – global producer 
and trader of GMO seeds in the world, known by its destructive impact on 
the environment and economics in many countries, - offers the support of 
the sustainable development programs for the communities and social 
entrepreneurship in Ukraine, as from 2013 the resources are reallocated 
(official site of Monsato). These failures of the system and “fake 
sustainability” shook the faith into the morality of the sustainable 
development.  
And now the sustainable development fashion led to unfavorable 
results, such as promotion by the big companies of the green or BIO labels 
 95 
 
as healthier products, which are not. Using the law of informational 
asymmetry, the producers try to increase the sales in that way. 
As for the National strategy for Sustainable Development in Ukraine 
(Sustainable Development Strategy of Ukraine – 2020), I would say that it 
is artificial construction, which was made for declaration, not for the 
realization. This is in fact government program of crisis-management steps, 
but the interests of communities and business are ignored. It does not 
correspond to the definition of the strategy, and does not meet the criterions 
of sustainability. There are no measurement tools which are recommended 
to use for understanding, are we there yet? Did we reach the goal? 
For example, the strategy has 25 indicators, and among them – No 16, 
where it’s written “the life expectancy by World Bank calculations will 
increase by 3 years” [ibid]. How? The response is below: “The means of 
the strategy are the preconditions of the strategy implementation through 
the social contract between institutions, business and community” [ibid].  
However, I strongly believe that Sustainable Development Strategy is 
reality and it’s achievable for our country, but now I should admit that there 
is a delay in sustainability, or rather to say – a regress. 
All the decisions on Sustainable Development need to be made by the 
actors, who are strongly concern and responsible for its realization. It 
becomes possible under conditions of the decentralization of the state 
power and distribution of bigger authorities to the communities or 
municipal forces to the city and regional levels. The dialogue between 
scholars and practitioners, big companies representatives and 
representatives of social movements is the source of the future rational 
decisions and future sustainable results.  
 
References: 
1. Beckerman, W. (1994). 'Sustainable Development': Is it a Useful Concept? 
Environmental values, 3(3), 191-209. 
2. Brundtland, G., Khalid, M., Agnelli, S., Al-Athel, S., Chidzero, B., Fadika, L. & 
Singh, M. (1987). Our Common Future (\'Brundtland report\'). 
3. Kates, R. W., Parris, T. M., & Leiserowitz, A. A. (2005). What is sustainable 
development?. Environment, 47(3), 8. 
4. Sustainable Development Strategy of Ukraine [Stratehija staloho rozvytku 
"Ukrajina - 2020"], available at: http://zakon5.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/5/2015 
5. Manisfestations anti-Monsanto en France et dans le monde // Samedi, 25 Mai, 
2013, Humanite.fr. Available at : http://www.humanite.fr/manisfestations-anti-
monsanto-en-france-et-dans-le-monde 
 96 
 
6. Ukraine is the granary of the Future [Ukrajina – žytnycja majbutn’oho] / Official 
site of Monsato in Ukraine. Available at: 
http://www.monsanto.com/global/ua/ourcommitments/pages/grain-basket.aspx 
 
 
 
APPROACHES TO MANAGING CORPORATE SOCIAL 
AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
 
Denys Smolennikov 
Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine 
 
There are several managerial approaches that can be applied for 
social and environmental responsibility issues: functional, system, process, 
integrated, administrative, situational, marketing and program approach. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 1 – The main managerial approaches to corporate 
environmental responsibility 
 
Functional approach to managerial decision-making considers the 
business firm from the position of its basic function. Social and 
environmental responsibility functions can be assigned to one or more 
structural units and they will be responsible not only for creating a report 
on social and environmental responsibility, but also for its implementation. 
Approaches to 
managing CSER 
functional system process 
integrated administrative 
program situational marketing 


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Sustainable development, delay or regress?

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