A review of the sustainable development and measurement

In our day, the sense of Sustainable Development has taken the place of traditional development concept, turning into an application plan through Our Common Future, the Brundtland Report, in 1987 and the Rio Summit in 1992. In this present study, the OECD's Preliminary Set of Sustainable Development Indicators published in 2001 is used in order to measure the countries' sustainability performances. The OECD Set is related to two main indices (Survival and Meeting the Needs) and three sub indices (Economic Assets, Human Capital and Environmental Assets). In the present study, five separate indices are created for 24 countries by using the database of 1992 and 2012. The created indices reveal how the countries progress during the sustainable development process. Even though comparing the countries for a specific theme is not possible by analyzing these indices as they are RNC, it is possible to which country is in a relatively better state in any year. In the present study, this analysis is conducted by means of the TOPSIS, one of the Multiple-Criteria Decision Making Methods. When analyzed the improvement in the index values, it is evident that each of the countries have paid strict attention to build up the sustainable development concept within herself. The correlation coefficients' of the countries which show simultaneous improvement in different sustainable development aspects are calculated as high, positive and statically meaningful. The correlation results have also shown that the relation between the aspects of Survival and Meeting the Needs covers the expectations. However, it is put forward in the research conducted with the TOPSIS method that the sustainable development performances of the countries cannot be associated with the ranking of per capita income level. In Turkey, although there has been some improvements, though unstable, in the economic assets and human capital aspects, it has been seen that the developments in the environmental assets aspect fail to satisfy the expectations. Also, no significant change is observed in the aspect of meeting the needs.