Wybrane informacyjne problemy definiowania zrównoważonego i trwałego rozwoju
Selected information problems of defining sustainable development

a theoretical analysis

Summary/Abstract: Defining of the basic notions is an important problem of the modern theory of economics. What is particularly significant is the creation of a common language whose elements will be acceptable for the scientific community, useful in practice, and sufficiently precise from the cognitive and methodological points of view. This paper presents the main stages of the debate which introduced the category of 'balanced and steady development' into the Polish literature. The debate has lasted since the 1980s and was triggered by the widespread use of the English phrase 'sustainable development'. The main aspects of the disputes which accompanied the rise of the concept are also discussed, particularly those related to its semantic and cognitive dimensions. Specific informative challenges connected not only with the notion of 'balanced and steady development' itself, but also with the cognitive and implementation issues, especially as regards the quantification of this category (important from the viewpoint of collecting relevant statistical data) and the modelling of this type of development. The use of mathematical language that is prevalent in the contemporary economics poses new challenges for every such category. They concern above of all the methods and the precision of measurement, as well as more general matters associated with the nature of described relationships. From the practical point of view, the main challenges include those connected with the costs of obtaining appropriate information in the context of their credibility, currentness, completeness, and relevance, as well as the accompanying threats of redundancy and information noise.

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