Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
that enhance well-being but which fall outside of the marketplace, like housework
and community volunteering, and will deduct the costs of crime-related expenditure,
environmental pollution and the depletion of non-renewable resources. According
to the GPI, the costs of economic growth now significantly outweigh the benefits.
Distaso (2007) applies Sen's theory of well-being as the basis for making the concept
of sustainable development operational, through the construction of a multidimen-
sional index of sustainability that also addresses the inadequacies of both GDP
and some multi-attribute indices like the ISEW and the UN's Human Development
Index (HDI), which stress such factors as longevity, literacy and maternal mortality
rates. Sen (1999) posits qualitative analytical categories such as functionings (personal
achievements), capabilities (achievable functionings) and freedom (actual oppor-
tunities). Meaningful variables relating to sustainability, such as consumption, income
distribution, life expectancy, health, education, employment, pollution, and aesthetic
and cultural values, were selected. Various weightings were then decided and, using
a standardized deviation methodology, Distaso applied the index to the countries of
the European Union. The method allowed relationships between natural capital and
quality of life, social well-being and environmental and economic conditions, and
environmental well-being and issues relating to inter- and intra-generational equity.
Irrespective of the sustainable development ranking, however, Distaso (2007: 178)
concluded that each country 'should implement policies which are specifically aimed
at reaching a development more careful to the environment, notwithstanding the
well known economic implications'.
Lawn (2003) notes that many critics of multidimensional indices argue that they
lack a robust theoretical foundation, particularly with regard to their valuation
methods, which may be rather crude and involve some massive assumptions. However,
Lawn argues that, although these methods can be improved upon, they are basically
sound, if warranting a continual refinement over time. Better standardization and
better welfare comparisons between nations will improve the likelihood of these
alternative indices to GDP being more broadly accepted and applied. However, a
note of caution is expressed by Stapleton and Garrod (2007), who, examining whether
the equal weights assumption informing the HDI should be relaxed or not, conclude
that only limited, if any, gains in validity may be achieved by increasing the complexity
of an already highly complex system.
Another alternative index that has attracted considerable recent interest has been
developed by the New Economics Foundation. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) attempts
to express the average years of happy life or well-being produced by any given society
or nation compared with the consumption of the Earth's finite resources. The HPI
incorporates three separate indicators relating to a country's ecological footprint and
people's life expectancy and life satisfaction. Data from 178 countries have been
compiled to produce a global happiness league table. The G8 countries do rather
poorly, with Britain in 108th place, France 129th, the US 150th and Russia 172nd.
The Foundation's HPI Report (Marks
et al
., 2006) makes the following points:
•
Countries classified by the United Nations as 'medium human development' fair
better than
both
low and high-development countries
because, beyond a certain
level, vastly increasing consumption fails to lead to greater well-being.
•
Well-being is not based on high levels of consumption:
for example, Estonia,
with high consumption, rates poorly on well-being, while the Dominican Republic
enjoys consumption at an equitable global (lower) level, but well-being is high.
