Estimating sustainability and regional inequalities using an enhanced sustainable development index in China

Accelerating warming has led to intensified natural disasters and a lower margin for greenhouse gas emissions, affecting both development sustainability and regional inequalities. However, the impacts have seldom been studied, especially in fast-developing countries with large annual CO2 emissions and frequent agricultural disasters, such as China. We have developed an enhanced sustainable development index (ESDI), which retains the base formula of the sustainable development index (SDI) but restructures the ecological component, replacing the material footprint (MF) with agricultural disaster intensity. The modification avoids overestimation of carbon emission impacts and incorporates a new dimension into sustainability estimation. The temporal variabilities and spatial imbalance of the China ESDI were characterized in 1997-2018 using linear trends, hot spots, the Thiel index, and variation coefficient analysis. The results showed 1) an overall ESDI decrease in China with differences between northern and southern half China (north decreasing and south increasing) and 2) the spatial inequities of development sustainability, mainly arising from the northern half China, continued to increase. The low sustainability clustered in the northern half, and the high sustainability clustered in the southern half. Correspondingly, the development sustainability of the former was more imbalanced than that of the latter. 3) The dramatic CO2 emissions increase since the late 2000s mainly accounts for the ESDI decrease in all of China and the northern half of China and is responsible for the enlarging sustainability imbalance as well.