The Economic Crisis And Sustainability – A Disputed Interaction And Influence

The reality of nowadays permit us to point the sustainability as an equilibrated evolution of economics, society and environment. The representatives of economic world discuss about the danger of economic crisis and of environment discuss about the crisis of natural resources, even both are interested to protect the society and to ensure the better living conditions. Between economic crisis and sustainability is a strong connection with reciprocal influence and although the environmental problems started since the '80, their effects are visible today: depletion of resources, human health quality, climate changes etc. The aim of this paper is to identify the main implications of the economic crisis in the sustainable development process and to find a response to question: may be an economic crisis favourable and desirable for sustainability? So, is essential to know what is this and why the economic crisis appears; then, we can identify their relationship. Our research uses the qualitative analysis by incursion in the literature chronology and we complete it with a quantitative analysis based on indicators relevant for the sustainability and economic crisis, too. We found some explanation for the discrepancies between theory and practice of sustainable development and some explanations of the economic crisis benefits. The main results will demonstrate that not always the economic crisis is undesirable, especially in terms of Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Moreover, we will present the positive implication of the economic crisis on the sustainability and we will demonstrate that between these it exist a favourable connection.