Comparative Analysis of Indicators of Well-being Using Environmental Accounting

Despite the abundance of sustainable development research and literature, there is a need to substantiate and quantify the links between human well-being and the environment. The National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD, Sweeney et al. 2007, these proceedings), which quantifies the resource basis of 134 nations (ca. 2000), was used to provide a uniform set of indicators of resource use, partitioning, trade, and environmental condition. These indices, such as percent renewable and non-renewable emergy use per capita, were compared to social, political, economic, and environmental indicators of welfare. The emergy indices were also compared to popular composite welfare and sustainability indices including the Yale Environmental Sustainability Index (YESI) and the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index (HDI). An inverse relationship was found between human well-being and environmental well-being. In particular, a strong negative association was observed between the percent of total emergy from renewable sources and HDI, and a strong positive association was observed between non-renewable emergy use per capita and HDI. This suggests that countries with a high proportion of their resource use coming from non-renewable sources have greater human welfare. A new indicator, termed the Emergy Total Wellbeing Index (ETWI), is proposed that integrates human welfare and resource sustainability by minimizing the percent of resource use that comes from non-renewable resources and maximizing human well-being as measured by HDI. Countries with high ETWI include Iceland, Argentina, and Suriname. The results of this study enhance sustainability assessment by providing data on relationships between the resource basis of an economy and patterns of national welfare.