Integrated sustainability perspective to interconnect circular economy, environmental development, and social status: designation of sustainable development spillovers

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is the most successful region globally regarding sustainable development but all its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have still low scores and high challenges, which signal the non-optimal spillovers from the other regions. This issue further complicates Europe's policy-making in its international relationships, especially with the greatest global economic powers like the United States (US) and China. To address the issues, this research aims to measure the spillovers of sustainable development between the EU, US, and China. To this end, it estimates their sustainability elasticities within 1973–2020, using the econometric technique of the SEY model, to examine the novel perspective of “Integrated Sustainability”. The results show that the sustainability elasticities are mainly positive, confirming the synergistic spillover effects of sustainability among the pillars of sustainable development. This finding adds the sustainability spillovers as the 4th pillar of sustainable development to the three traditional pillars including social status, environment development, and circular economy. In addition, the spillovers show a symmetric format among the sample countries, implying a balanced relationship with the other countries. According to this finding, policy-makers should strengthen international relationships with other countries and regions, including both Western and Eastern powers, by improving peaceful connections. In this policy-making, they should build a balanced regional and economic connection for an integrated world with a multilateral and flow-based governance system instead of unilateral and local-based governance.