O44 - Environment and GrowthReturn

The objective of this paper is to present the results of an analysis of the indicator Greenhouse gas emissions (GGE). The GGE is one of the headline indicators tracked under the EU's main socioeconomic strategy until the year 2020 - the EUROPE 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In the area of sustainable growth, the Resource-efficient Europe initiative was established. For 2020, the EU has made a unilateral commitment to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from its 28 member states by 20% compared to 1990 levels. The GGE indicator shows total man-made emissions of the so-called Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases. It presents annual total emissions in relation to those observed in 1990. The aggregate greenhouse gas emissions are expressed in units of CO2 equivalent.
The development of the GGE indicator in the EU and in the Czech Republic from 2000 to 2014 from the point of view of the ability to achieve the Strategy objectives is analyzed. In terms of the level of the analyzed indicator, the set of the EU countries can be divided into two significantly different groups - the euro area and the non-euro area; or into groups by the year of their joining the EU. Analyses of the dependency between the growth of GGE and the GDP growth for both the set of the 28 EU countries and the Czech Republic are presented as well.

The objective of the study is to analyse the Czech position in the field of global competitiveness. In the past, the only data used for evaluating the position of a country were "hard data": data that were measurable. Nowadays, many research institutions as well as scientists have come with a new idea. Not only hard data are important for a country's position in the competitiveness rank, but also soft data have to be taken into account. The General Competitiveness Index (GCI), used for measuring competitiveness, has been replaced with the Sustainability-adjusted Competitiveness Index (SCI). Two sustainability pillars are added to the general competitiveness: the social sustainability pillar and the environmental sustainability pillar. This study analyses the GCI and the SCI in the context of sustainability. The main objective is to find out how these two sustainability pillars influence the competitiveness position of the Czech Republic. The method used in the study is an analysis and comparison of the hard and soft data, which means that it is based on a multidimensional analysis used by the WEF and the IMD. The study confirms that there is an increasing influence of these soft - qualitative - data.