The criterion for managing the sustainable use of natural resources

Abstract

The increasing consumption of natural resources in the world economy in the twenty-first century can lead to a global environmental crisis, so, effective management of their sustainable use is necessary to increase resource productivity. To this end, a variety of key indicators are proposed, mainly at the national level, but they are not, firstly, associated with the lower levels of the hierarchy in management of economic production systems. Secondly, they do not reflect the need for business to introduce technological innovation that can reduce the material intensity of production. The aim of the work is to identify the ways to address these shortcomings and develop a new criterion indicator. To coordinate the economic interests of the main subjects of management in the market economy, a methodological approach is proposed, which consists in distributing outcomes and costs in using production factors at all hierarchy levels of economic management. A proportional relationship between material intensity and capital intensity of production, determining the impact of technological progress on the efficiency of economic resources has been established. As a result, the analytical relationship between the efficiency of natural resources use and the efficiency of individual firms introducing technological innovation in their activity has been revealed. It is shown that the economic efficiency of technological innovation should be calculated on the basis of the proposed new type of economic analysis, namely, the investment and innovation analysis. Keywords—natural resources, sustainable use, productivity, efficiency, effective management, technological innovation, criterion indicator, factors of production.