Ethical Markets and Sustainable Development

Achieving development while adhering to ethics is only possible when ethical values are preserved in all economic interactions, allowing for both economic and ethical requirements to be fulfilled. Increasing attention has been paid to ethical markets in line with development. Ethical markets are those which focus on investments and activities related to environmental issues and social responsibilities. One of the main goals of sustainable development is to achieve a reasonable level of well being with a justice-based distribution that can be sustained over future generations. Under such circumstances, the society shall move away from an economic growth based on exhaustive consumption of finite resources towards an improvement in the quality of life based on utilization of renewable resources. The article explores the relationship between ethics and development within the framework of sustainable development. The particular view of sustainable development adopted here, is the “capital approach”. According to this approach, sustainable development is achieved through interaction of four types of capital: human, natural, social and material capital, respectively. For each of these types, relevant ethical indicators -as factors influencing ethically that particular type of capital- are defined, as the followings: 1) Environmental performance for natural capital; 2) Augmented social capital for social capital; 3) Quality of life for human capital; and 4) Good governance, underground economy and money laundry for material capital. These selected indicators point to the central issues discussed in ethical markets under sustainable development. The article discusses the value of these indicators for Iran and some of its competitor countries- as listed in Iranian government's Outlook document. The performance of these countries is accordingly compared with that of Iran.