ABSTRACT
As sustainable development is a key concept in the climate change debate, it is important to understand the different strands of thinking that have gone into, and are ongoing in, the sustainable development paradigm. This chapter provides an introduction to the sustainable development literature. It suggests a set of indicators that reflect economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development to be assessed in relation to GHG emission-reduction projects. The chapter considers the conceptual part of developing operational sustainable development indicators. Intragenerational equity is discussed further from three perspectives: the economic perspective, the environmental perspective, and the capability perspective. It covers issues concerning the operationality of sustainable development in relation to GHG emission-reduction projects. One approach to addressing income distributional consequences is to map all policy impacts in relation to income groups and hence to estimate the distributional incidence of control costs and environmental benefits.
