A Comprehensive Evaluation Approach to Measure Sustainable Development of Countries

摘要

Based on the quantitative definition of sustainable development, comprehensive evaluation method is used to estimate the level of a country's sustainable development. The indices chosen under four principles are divided into positive and negative indices after deliberate consideration. AHP is implied to determine the weights of indices. Two types of aggregated index are formed through two evaluation methods, and results show that the two methods prefer different types of countries. According to the difference, three types of sustainable development are defined: Backward, Unstable and Stable Sustainable Development. The aggregated index from the first method can help sort out the first two kinds of countries and regions, and that from the other method is able to help pick out the last two kinds.