Page 79 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.77, # 1, 2020, pp. 65-83

To achieve Sustainable Development Goals, there must be an economic, social,
institutional and political approach. Taking this into account, the president of the
Republic of Azerbaijan signed a decree (October 06, 2016) on the establishment of
the National Coordination Council on Sustainable Development of the Republic of
Azerbaijan “in order to coordinate the implementation of the tasks assigned to the
state bodies in connection with the obligations arising from the agenda in the field of
sustainable development until 2030. We can notice this decree among the measures
taken to implement, the UN Azerbaijan. As stated in The Agenda 2030 on
Sustainable Development,” the use of the global indicators framework for
monitoring and analysis of development goals, and the development of governments
to support the monitoring process are important.
More than half of the population of Azerbaijan lives in cities. Baku, the capital of
the country, is the largest city in the Caucasus and is expected to remain unchanged
in the near future. About 40% of the Azerbaijani population and 70% of the existing
industrial potential are concentrated in Baku agglomeration (Baku, Sumgait,
Khirdalan cities and their immediate surroundings) located on the Absheron
Peninsula. The Absheron Peninsula is an urban zone, a space of economic, social,
ecological and demographic contradictions.

In the world, industrial oil was first produced in Azerbaijan in the XIX century. For
the first time in the 20th century, oil production from offshore fields in the world
was in the Caspian Sea, in Azerbaijan. However, unfortunately, the rapid
development of the oil industry has created serious ecological problems here.
Protection and efficient use of Natural Resources in Absheron Peninsula, restoration
of polluted areas, Waste Management, expansion of the scale of green areas, etc.
despite the continuous measures taken in the directions, the ecological situation in
the Absheron Peninsula remains tense. With a total area of 222,000 hectares, the
total area of this peninsula - 33,000 hectares, including the area of oil-contaminated
lands-is currently 10.6 thousand hectares. In some places, the wastewater flows into
lakes and the Caspian Sea, etc. In the near future, the goal of the Republic of
Azerbaijan is to remove the Absheron peninsula from the list of sources polluting
the Caspian Sea. To this end, it carries out complex measures to clean the sea from
pollution. The preparation of the new general plan of Baku for 20 years will be
completed by the end of 2020. As the main provisions in this plan, the focus is on
improving environmental protection and ecology.

Among the indicators characterizing the Sustainable Development identified by the
European Union Statistical Bureau (Euro stat), durable consumption and production
indicators occupy a special place. Consumption models: consumption of food products per
capita of the population, production models: the ratio of the area used for organic farming to
the total agricultural area is marked as indicators characterizing Sustainable Development.
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