Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1. Components of the 2002 Environmental Sustainability Index
Environmental Systems
(13 variables) Measurements on the state of natural stocks such as air, soil, and water
Environmental Stresses
(15 variables) Measurements on the stress on ecosystems such as pollution and deforestation.
Vulnerability
(5 variables) Measurements on basic needs such as health, nutrition, and mortality.
Capacity
(18 variables) Measurements of social and economic variables such as corruption and liberty, energy consumption, and schooling rate.
Stewardship
(13 variables) Measurements of global cooperation such as treaty participation and compliance.
2.
Reproducible:
The algorithm or method
used to generate the index - the list of scores
and ranks for a set of administrative units -
should be replicable on similar data.
3.
Defensible:
The elements and variables of
the index should map to concepts the index
claims to measure.
heuristic grouping, not used in calculating the
index; K is the index set for the indicators; |
K
and |
J
k
are the number of indicators and number
of variables in the kth indicator;
Y
j
is the sample
mean for variable j - across countries,
S
y
j
is the
sample standard deviation for variable j, Φ is the
inverse standard normal distribution function. See
Table 1.
The ESI, like other indices of environmental
concern (such as the environmental wellbeing
index (EWI), and the human development index
(HDI)) condenses dissimilar social and physical
metrics into cohesive summaries for national
level comparisons [Prescott-Allen 2001, Osberg
2002]. The goal for the ESI is to capture the most
recent version of available data to get the best,
most recent, snapshot. The approach is to use the
most recent year available for each variable at
each country.
The breadth of the ESI - 64 dissimilar vari-
ables from varied sources - presents aggregation
and processing challenges: in particular missing
values (missingness) and complex dependencies.
Some variables are composites of information
from several sources: pollutant yield divided by
land area conditioned on population density, for
variables in the `Environmental Systems' and
`Environmental Stresses' indicators - for example.
Others may be imprecise across observations:
mortality and disease variables in the `Vulner-
ability' indicator, for instance. See Annex 1 and
Annex 2 of the 2002 ESI report for elucidation
[World Economic Forum 2002].
|
THE 2002 ENVIRONMENTAL
SUSTAINABILITY INDEX (ESI)
The 2002 Environmental Sustainability Index
(ESI) was created as a measure of overall prog-
ress towards environmental sustainability and
designed to permit systematic and quantitative
comparison between nations [World Economic
Forum 2002]. The ESI is a scaled linear combi-
nation of 64 variables of environmental concern.
Environmental measures (such as oxide emissions
and concentration) are included along with politi-
cal indicators relevant (such as civil liberty and
level of corruption) that are relevant to environ-
mental sustainability [World Economic Forum
2001, 2002].
The 2002 ESI is defined as:
Y
−
Y
1
1
∑ ∑
j
j
ESI =
100
*
Φ
.
|
K
K
|
|
J
|
S
k
∈
j J
∈
k
y
k
j
(1)
Here:
J
k
is the index set for the variables in
the kth `indicator' of the ESI: the ESI is averaged
over the `indicators'; the ESI `components' are a
