Comprehensive evaluation on sustainable development based on planetary pressures and ecological well-being performance: A case study on the belt and road regions

Abstract

The ultimate goal of sustainable development is to expand human developmental potential while easing planetary pressures, maximize human well-being with the smallest ecological consumption. However, it is difficult to rely on a single index or a single measure to address all sustainable development issues, which needs to comprehensively evaluate its abilities and levels from ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’. Thus we construct a comprehensive evaluation method, the consumption–pressure–output–efficiency method (the first two reflect ‘sustainability’ and the latter two ‘development’). It combines four progressive composite indices respectively reflecting (1) ecological consumption (ecological footprint), (2) planetary pressures (from carbon dioxide emissions and the material footprint index), (3) human well-being outputs (the planetary pressures–adjusted human development index, or PHDI), and (4) ecological well-being output efficiency (an adjusted ecological well-being performance index, or AEWP). Our empirical verification results show that the same ecological consumption will show different ecological surplus/deficit and development potential due to different biocapacity; the higher the level of human development, the greater the planetary pressure; the human development index (HDI) adjusted by planetary pressure are generally decreased, and the greater the HDI, the greater the dispersion between PHDI and HDI; and there is no necessarily complete consistency between PHDI and AEWP. The Belt and Road regions overall show a greater capacity for, and improvement in sustainable development than the world from 1990 to 2017, due to lower ecological consumption, slower decrease in biocapacity, faster increase in PHDI, and higher AEWP. However, for each country, it needs a comprehensive evaluation on case-by-case analysis to determine the right solutions and the corresponding development plans and pathways.