A Global Assessment of Sustainable Development Based on Modification of the Human Development Index via the Entropy Method

Abstract

In response to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this paper proposes a new National Sustainable Development Index (NSDI), based on the modification of the Human Development Index (HDI). The purpose of our research was to improve the widely adopted HDI index by incorporating more comprehensive sustainability perspectives, so as to help policy makers to better analyze the sustainability-related issues facing their countries. After clarifying the concept of sustainable development, our research suggests that this term represents a coordination and configuration of economic, social, and environmental aspects of development, with its major focuses on balancing intra-generational welfare and maximizing the total welfare across generations. We then put forward a novel NSDI framework including 12 indicators from dimensions of economy, resource environment, and society, and calculated the weights of 12 indicators using the entropy method. To further validate our proposed index, this paper also measured the NSDIs of 163 countries in the world, and compared this index with the HDI and other well-known modification indices of HDI. The results showed that the NSDI is a reliable and relative complete index for sustainable development assessment, which makes up for the shortcomings of existing indices.

Assessment of Global Sustainable Development, Environmental Sustainability, Economic Development and Social Development Index in Selected Economies

“…Microsoft excel worksheet, C++ and SPSS statistical software are used for descriptive analysis, and STATA statistical software is used to run the proposed regression models. [3,4,14,38,39]. It is an effective policy tools in developmental field [3,4,14].…”

“…Scientific research community, existing researchers and international development organizations have created several indexes such as human development index, physical quality life index, small business optimism index, global happiness index, ease of doing business index, global competitive index, economic freedom index, corruption perception index, civil liberties index, global manufacturing index, business environment index, buyer sophistication index, firm level technology absorption index, logistic performance index, market potential index, entrepreneurship and development index, global peace index, food security index, livelihood security index, sustainable livelihood security index, global slavery index, global liveability index, economic development index, social development index, socio-economic development index, environmental sustainability index, environmental performance index, energy sustainability index, energy performance indices, consumer price index, insomnia severity index, climatological index, climate variability index, index system of agricultural sustainable development capability, agricultural sustainability index, water quality index, global sustainable development index, global sustainable development goals index and other indexes. Above indexes used as a proxy for assessing the relative or absolute progress of specific socio-economic and other activities for a county or across economies or across entities [3,4,12,14,20,24,35,36,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. Any index can be developed using primary and secondary data for a specific socio-economic activity at micro to macro level.…”

“…In above perspectives, theoretical review has shown that SD is an integration of economic, human, social, technological and environmental development [3,4,[7][8][9][10][11][12]. Thus, it creates an appropriate bridge between economic, social and environmental development [13,14]. A group of studies have claimed that protection of environmental factors and ecosystem services, and economic and social development are the crucial determinants of SD [5,[15][16][17][18].…”

“…Moreover, recycling, minimization of waste material, substitution of materials, pollution controls, efficient use and protection of natural resources through applications of technologies in production activities are conducive to achieve sustainable development (SD) [1,3,5,7,14,24]. Conversely, most economies are framing their policies to attain high development in economic, social and technological sectors [4] as paying low attention towards environmental development and ecological security.…”

“…Furthermore, existing researchers and research academia could not develop a scientific and universally acceptable method and indicators for measurement of SD. For this, previous studies have created global sustainable development index as an integration of economic, social and environmental development, sustainable development goal index and national sustainable development index using different methods [4,14,20,25,34,35]. Based on estimated sustainable development index, most studies claimed that performance of a country in SD depend upon chosen method and undertaken indicators [25,34,36].…”