Proposal and application of a Sustainable Development Index

This work shows the methodology used to design a Sustainable Development Index (SDI), and its application to a region within the Coatzacoalcos river basin. This region is one of the more highly industrialized zones in Mexico, and is located in the State of Veracruz, about 800 km southeast of Mexico City. The SDI was formed within the framework of the driving forces, state, and response (DSR) philosophy. Within this framework we have included an indicator about environmental accounting in order to determine the monetary value of losses due to depletion and deterioration of natural resources. At the same time we use the Multi-Attribute Decision Theory methodology along with 21 indicators; most of them were designed and calculated specifically for this work. The indicators represent the environmental, economic, and social characteristics of the region. The utility functions that were designed for grading the region in each attribute used international and national parameters of performance. The SDI was applied to seven municipalities. The Figure of Merit obtained by each municipality served to rank them in terms of their closeness to a Sustainable Development. The results of the analysis also identified and prioritized the most urgent problems that need to be solved in order to obtain an improvement in the development of the municipalities in accordance to sustainability and resource management criteria. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.