مصرف انرژی،رفاه انسان و توسعه اقتصادی در کشورهای مرکزی و شرقی اروپا: داستان احتیاطی از ثبات

Sustainability is fundamentally a challenge of tradeoffs. In order to improve human well-being through economic development we consume nonrenewable energy and other natural resources, relying on a broad range of ecosystem services. Enhancing sustainability requires reducing the “energy intensity of human well-being (EIWB)”: the amount of energy used per unit of human well-being. In this study we employ longitudinal analysis techniques to assess the temporally dynamic relationship between EIWB and economic development for a sample of 12 Central and Eastern European (CEE) nations for the 1992 to 2010 period. These are nations that have recently transitioned, which is still an ongoing process, from socialist command economies to market demand economies. During this ongoing transition, many of them have experienced declines in energy intensity, coupled with increased energy efficiency, while human well-being has improved considerably. The results of the analysis indicate that the relationship between EIWB and economic growth in CEE nations is complex and has changed dramatically through time. Of particular importance, the later years of the study exhibit an increasingly sustainable relationship between EIWB and economic development. The findings point to future possibilities for relatively more harmonious relationships between development, human well-being, and the natural environment.

Pathways to sustainability pose challenges for how to balance ecological and environmental concerns with human well-being and economic development. It is generally assumed that development enhances human well-being (Brady et al., 2007 and Gilpin, 2001), while ecosystems provide valuable services to humanity (Liu et al., 2007 and Ringold et al., 2012), which themselves enhance quality of life in various ways (Prescott-Allen, 2001 and Reid et al., 2005). However, for decades many sustainability scholars have questioned the extent to which heightened resource use further enhances quality of life once societies have reached certain thresholds of collective well-being (Mazur, 2011, Mazur and Rosa, 1974 and Steinberger and Roberts, 2010). At the same time, lively debates across the environmental social sciences continue regarding the complex relationships between environmental conditions and economic development (Jorgenson and Clark, 2012, Rosa et al., 2010 and York, 2012).

This study was motivated by the need for integrated research on sustainability in Central and Eastern European (CEE) nations that considers the interconnections between human well-being and environmental/natural resource conditions, and how economic development affects them. Drawing from recent research, we designed and calculated an annual measure of the energy intensity of well-being (EIWB) for a sample of CEE nations that quantifies the adjusted ratio of per capita energy consumption and average life expectancy rates for the 1992 to 2010 time period. To assess the potentially changing effects of economic development on our measure of EIWB, we employed two-way fixed effects panel model estimation techniques and statistical interactions between time and annual measures of economic development, measured as GDP per capita, while controlling for other potentially relevant factors.