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The Environmental Sustainability Index
The Environmental Sustainability Index 2001 ranks progress towards sustainable development for 122 countries.
It is based on a core set of 22 indicators clustered around four basic themes:
- health of environmental systems
- human stress on natural systems
- human vulnerability to environmental disturbances
- social and institutional capacity for effective response to environmental challenges.
The Index is the product of collaboration among the Global Leaders of Tomorrow Environment Task Force, Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy, and the Centre International Earth Science Information Network. A primary objective of the ESI report is to shift environmental decision-making onto a fact-based analytically rigorous foundation. The ESI is designed to create a series of comparative benchmarks of environmental conditions in different countries.
Key findings:
- Economic conditions affect, but do not determine, environmental conditions. Although there is some correlation between a country's wealth and its ranking, among countries with similar levels of economic growth there is a significant level of variation.
- While there are gaps in the data, it is possible to measure environmental sustainability (as defined by ESI) for over 75 percent of the countries in the world
The report that accompanies the Environmental Sustainability Index is comprehensive. The process of developing the index is explained in an open and transparent manner. The assumptions, data collection and gaps underlying the index are clearly laid out. A correlation of the ESI with other comparative measures such as the Ecological Footprint and the Human Development Index is presented.
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External Links
A Better Quality of Life: A Strategy for Sustainable Development for the UK
Worldwatch Vital Signs
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