Abstract:
In the last few years the issue of turning to good account raw materials and resources as efficiently as possibly and the issue of environment protection have become the most important factors of economic growth and development because of the effects of the process of global heating. The economic growth and development represents a desiderate for any country, developed or still emerging. The progress has always been and it is still based on the waste of natural resources and raw materials. If since not so long ago the warning signals regarding environment and the exhaustion of natural resources have been ignored, at present mankind is more and more aware of the seriousness of the consequences that some progress factors have at both economic and social level. As shown in the paper, in time the main factors of economic growth and development have varied and multiplied. Some became the causes of the two processes and then became their consequences. Some economists focused on intrinsic factors, while others payed attention to the extrinsic ones and formulated theories more or less valid, providing „recepies” for economic growth and development. The begining of the third millennium has changed the paradigma. Mankind has to face problems that no one could possibly ignore. In this context we are not wrong ranking first the natural factor and resources, exhaustible and therefore so precious, within the context of the analyses regarding economic growth and development. When the only unexhaustible resource is the human being, because of demographic continuity, the progress factors should be ordered in a different way from that in which they have been ordered so far, changing the hierarchy and giving a strong warning as regards the role played by environment as well as natural resources to economic growth and development at both micro- and macroeconomic levels.
