Sustainable nations: what do aggregate indexes tell us?

What is a ‘sustainable nation’ and how can we identify and rank ‘sustainable nations?’ Are nations producing and consuming in a sustainable way? Although several aggregate indexes have been proposed to answer such questions, comprehensive and internationally comparable data are not available for most of these. This paper quantitatively compares three aggregate indexes of sustainability: the World Bank’s ‘Genuine Savings’ measure, the ‘Ecological Footprint,’ and the ‘Environmental Sustainability Index.’ These three indexes are available for a large number of countries and also seem to be the most influential among the aggregate indexes. This paper first discusses the main limitations and weaknesses of each of these indexes. Subsequently, it shows that rankings of sustainable nations and aggregate assessments of unsustainable world population and Readers should send their comments on this paper to: [email protected] within 3 months of publication of this issue. J. R. Pillarisetti (&) Faculty of Business, Economics and Policy Studies, University of Brunei Darussalam, BE1410 Gadong, Brunei Darussalam e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] J. C. J. M. van den Bergh ICREA, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] J. C. J. M. van den Bergh Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain J. C. J. M. van den Bergh Department of Economics and Economic History, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain J. C. J. M. van den Bergh Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands J. C. J. M. van den Bergh Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 123 Environ Dev Sustain (2010) 12:49–62 DOI 10.1007/s10668-008-9179-7