Definition
The sustainable national income (SNI) in a certain year is defined as the maximum attainable production level whereby, with the available technology in the year of calculation, vital environmental functions remain available ‘for ever’. The production level in the same year that is registered in the standard national income (NI) does not meet this condition. Environmental functions and their preservation after all fall outside the NI. The NI is therefore always higher than the SNI. The difference gives information about the distance between the present production level and the production level in a sustainable situation. If the distance decreases then we are on the road to environmental sustainability, the part of the production that is based on unsustainable use of the environment decreases. If the distance increases then we are drifting further away from sustainability.
Read more about this topic: Sustainable National Income
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“It’s a rare parent who can see his or her child clearly and objectively. At a school board meeting I attended . . . the only definition of a gifted child on which everyone in the audience could agree was “mine.””
—Jane Adams (20th century)
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)