Sustainability in the Baltic States: Towards the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to analyse and define the position of the Baltic States, i.e. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia regarding the implementation level of the concept of sustainable development in 2010-2016, measured by the realisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Moreover, the problems constituting barriers in achieving these goals were identified. The study was based on the indicators monitoring SDG in a global perspective. Eurostat and its Database was the source of data, taking into account their availability and completeness. The synthetic measure of development (SMD) was applied to assess the implementation of the sustainable development concept. The socio-economic situation of the Baltic States was addressed in the introduction. The core part of the study presents the research results showing the position of the Baltic States relative to the implementation level of SDG. The value of SMD in individual years was determined for each of the analysed countries. As a general conclusion, it can be stated that the situation of all countries showed improvement over the analysed period. Nonetheless, the current situation cannot be described as favourable in any of the countries, Estonia was the closest to achieving this status.