What are the levels of sustainable development within each country and can these levels be quantified and compared to other countries?

Although complex, a standardized sustainability index per country, comparable to other countries, should be researched and presented. This would indicate levels of sustainability within countries, taking population growth/age, natural resources, pollution levels, etc. into account. Based on this, areas for education/action can be identified. This is both a earth system & social science topic combined, and the final outcome should be to raise awareness within these problem sectors.

2 comments

1. bchen says:

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   The development of sustainability indicators is already an active area of research. Information about many of these are available at: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/. There is certainly room for more research not only on how to improve the development of indicators based on Earth science and other inputs but also on how indicators or similar approaches can be used to better inform policy and decision making.
2. LFPacheco says:

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   We tend to divide the world between developed and underdeveloped countries. However, we do not have adequate measures of sustainability, which may show us that “developed” countries are actually out of the limits of sustainability, and are therefore, not really developed. Several ways have been proposed to measure sustainability from the point of view of single natural resources’ use, but no measures are yet available to account for sustainable development as a whole.
   So, the question posted by jcf.7140 is highly adequate. I posted a similar one “How can we (as human society) know, and measure, that our development standars are within sustainable limits?”, which has been reported as similar, but may not be entirely so. Anyway, it is a matter of details, and I think we should work on this topic.