Determinants of Sustainable Development A Panel Analysis of SAARC Countries

Abstract

World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) defines sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The concept of sustainable development seems complex because development encompasses various scales such as geographical and time scales (Munasinghe, 2001). Primarily, an important objective of sustainable development is to achieve economic stabilization, and social and environment sustainability by ensuring prosperity for present and future generations. It is a long-term agenda to sustain the economy and environment through securing and avoiding over-usage of natural resources of the country. Likewise, the fruits of macro level development ought to dis aggregate at community level because everybody has right to have safe and clean environment. And the obtained development should be environment friendly despite reducing poverty level, providing good standards of living, and achieving other development-based targets [Ansari et.al (2011); Hatthachan (2014); Panula et.al (2014)].