Sustainable National Policy Planning with Conflicting Goals

Abstract According to the Latvian policy planning documents, the main macro indicators for monitoring progress of national development are: GDP per capita, income inequity index S80/S20 and national population growth. Policy planning documents propose different sectoral targets that are not linked with each other, sometimes providing conflicting goals. There are international and European Union (EU) targets (especially in the environmental and climate sector) that sometimes contradict with national goals and occasionally are not set as national priorities in Latvia and for which the necessary resources are not appropriated. The authors propose an improved methodological approach interlinking national policy indicators and sectoral models to generate more efficient decision making mechanisms.