Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The green economy is one of the important tools to ensure the sustainable development of any country. Green economy is defined as an economy with a high level of quality of life of the population, careful and rational use of natural resources in the interests of present and future generations and in accordance with the country’s international environmental obligations. The paper tackles a case of Kazakhstan. New policy towards green economy, as it is claimed, provides the basis for deep systemic reforms to improve the welfare, quality of life of the population of Kazakhstan and the country’s entry into a list of the 50 most developed countries in the world. In modern conditions, the relationship of economic development with changes in the environment, the impact on many forms of international economic relations is an important feature of the globalization of the economy. One of the most pressing issues among the international community is the issue of introducing a green economy, which is a reliable driving force of economic growth in emerging markets, providing new opportunities of overcoming the economic crisis. The paper analyzes efforts of Kazakhstan trough its active economic policy to transform its economy into green one.

The safety and security research is generally presented as a problem of two levels. The first level is focused on individuals and social groups while the second level deals with the safety and security issues on a country level. Research on both levels, however, is very often concentrated on the life or health threat in direct connection with war conflicts, terrorism, organised crime, political or social persecution and natural disasters. Nevertheless, such understanding and evaluation of safety and security does not comply with the present reality. There exist a wide range of scientific studies proving that the present understanding of human safety and security consists of several dimensions which might not be directly linked to actual war activities. The human safety and security of people in a broad sense could be jeopardized also by unfair practices or abuse of political power by governmental bodies, corruption in national economies, discrimination of minorities, drugs and black markets. The threat to the safety and security of individuals and countries is a multidimensional problem and its scope, intensity and dynamics should be measured by adequate tools and should be understood as a standard dimension of the quality of life. A specific tool should be adopted for measuring the safety and security in people´s life and for measuring safety and security on a country level. Current statistical and other exact methods enable researchers to perform qualitative and quantitative measurements and evaluate the safety and security in a broad scope and with needed depth and qualification. The aim of this paper is to review present trends in the measurement of the safety and security levels in context with actual impacts of external threats from international war conflicts, terrorist attacks and corruption practices and to underline the activities of countries and the international community to stop, or to reduce such threats. To measure these dimensions of safety and security, some selected indexes and indicators of international standards will be used. Our aim is to demonstrate their application in mapping and evaluating the safety and security situation within the European Union countries and particular attention to the performance of Slovakia.

The paper analyses the results of a research conducted with the aim to study topical questions on social innovation attempting to disclose its role expressed via its mission and impact on the Latvian society in the context of sustainable development. The authors present the methodology, conduct and results of the qualitative content analysis of the texts of a focus group discussion with participants from the fields of entrepreneurship, education, communication, sport and charity. The empirical data were analysed with open coding using AQUAD 6 software for the registration of conceptual codes, data processing and creation of frequency tables of categories developed. Having summarised the main findings, it was concluded that social innovation may promote the development of both individuals and the entire society improving the quality of people’s life. The research resulted in the revelation of five domains of social innovation impact including the development at the: intrapersonal, interpersonal interaction, societal growth, innovation, and work opportunity levels.