Dynamic sustainability assessment: The case of Russia in the period of transition (1985–2008)

Russia has experienced twenty years of economic and social change, which had a substantial impact on the regional and sectoral patterns of the development of its economy, infrastructure, the quality of the environment and the well-being of its people. The current economic revival offers new opportunities and presents new challenges for the sustainable development of Russia. The paper employs the UN Sustainable Development framework of indicators and assesses sustainability of Russia using multi-criteria evaluation methods, namely the uncertainty randomization multi-criteria evaluation method “Analysis and Synthesis of Parameters under Information Deficiency” (ASPID). The analysis covers economic, environmental and social trends in Russia's development in 1985–2008 and assesses sustainability of this development from the point of view of multiple criteria. The results show the potential of employment of multi-criteria methods for the sustainability assessment at the macro level and offer useful insights into multidimensional nature of sustainability and the role of priority setting in the evaluation process. Such an analysis reveals the degree of harmoniousness of sustainable development policy. It shows how different sets of priorities determine the outcome of multidimensional analysis of sustainability and could potentially help in assessing progress and designing new policy instruments. This paper is one of the first to apply multi-criteria methods to the macro sustainability analysis in the dynamic setting. ► Multi-criteria approaches could be used to synthesize information on sustainability criteria and assess sustainability of countries over time. ► Each multi-criteria approach allows to consider the development pattern of a country from a different perspective: priorities, trade-offs, etc. ► ASPID method helps to consider sustainability trends given various priorities e.g. priority of social and environmental over economic factors. ► Two sets of criteria were used in the context of development of Russia: 3 and 10 in two settings: priority of GDP vs CO 2 and Life expectancy. ► Russia evolved sustainably from 1995 to 1997, followed by a downward trend until 2001, and a new sustainable trend between 2003 and 2007.