Importance of Culture for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the importance and the role of culture in sustainable development. The study is based on a qualitative research on the quota sample of three referential groups of experts by using interview as a method of data collection. The findings of the study confirm that culture, as a holistic and complex system of values and creative potentials, stimulates social cohesion in society, strengthens intercultural dialogue as well as provides for economic effects, all of which is in turn reflected in sustainable development. We suggest the establishment of a fourth pillar, aside the economic, social and environmental, to be incarnated by culture.

Keywords

• sustainability
• culture
• social cohesion
• intercultural dialogue
• fourth pillar