Neo-Industrial Structural Shifts in Sustainable Development Methodology

Abstract

Human economic activity, production and use of goods and services take place in the framework of a close exchange of materials and energy with the environment. Entering into relationship with the natural environment, industrial enterprises form a dynamic ecological-and-economic system, which is a combination of two jointly functioning subsystems: ecological and economic. The main feature of the ecologicaland-economic system is the balance, proportionality, balance of its natural and industrial subsystems. In this regard, a necessary condition for the transition of economy to sustainable development should be the reduction of the environmental capacity of production through the introduction of a new business philosophy, which is based on greening processes. Environmental activities, as one of the components of a balanced development, are becoming more and more economically viable, allowing enterprises to use the various direct and indirect benefits and profits associated with it, preventing negative environmental impacts. Of particular importance is the expansion of the economic basis of environmental activities in the conditions of modern structural changes in the economy, radically changing the proportions of consumption of natural and intellectual resources. Today, such structural changes are neo-industrial in nature, marking a new stage in the development of global industry, with increasing digitalization of production and a drastic reduction in natural resource consumption as well as harmful emissions cut.