Sustainable Tourism Law

A LEGAL APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS 747 development path, a comprehensive survey of indicators and assessment procedures is beyond the scope of this article. Sustainability needs to be addressed globally although national territories, economies, and societies may constitute the most significant level (Holden et al., 2018). National governments possess the most significant means as well as the capacity to use them to address all relevant imperatives of global sustainable development. Thus, any model that might be proposed will primarily manifest on a national level. However, it is known that local unsustainable behaviour may trigger global unsustainability (Holden et al., 2018). Moreover, since the local level possesses several measures and means by which to promote global sustainability, we need a multilevel approach in pursuing sustainable development (Holden et al., 2018). It is important to stress that sustainable development, as opposed to sustainability (this term addresses the continuity and stability of humanity’s future on this planet) focuses its shift on other social objectives, namely the plight of the poorest in the world community. So, sustainable development must be understood as economic, environmental and social development that lasts (Pearce, 2013). The standard approach to sustainability assessment may be seen as a sequential process that can be described as follows: (i) selection and definition of the SDI; (ii) annual production of SDI; (iii) standard annual indicator-based assessment of SDI; (iv) formulation of SDI targets and policy actions (Garnåsjordet, 2012). This sequential process has been reflected by several attempts to create general frameworks for SDIs from various institutions like the United Nations (UN), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Union (EU), World Bank or regional organizations (United Nations, 2007). The standard situation of sustainability assessment is that there is an SDI set generally categorized as economic, environmental and social indicators. For each indicator one can assess a direction of development which may be considered in line with a sustainable development path (Garnåsjordet, 2012). However, the main issue is whether the total picture points toward a sustainable development path or not since reports on sustainability assessments may miss (i) how the indicators depend upon each other; (ii) how they may be linked to each other and (iii) how trade-offs are to be evaluated (Garnåsjordet, 2012). Due to several limitations, it is becoming widely accepted that the capital approach indicators must include multidimensional environmental indicators as