Towards sustainable society: the sustainable livelihood security (SLS) approach for prioritizing development and understanding sustainability: an insight from West Bengal, India

A region's sustainability must be enhanced to achieve sustainable development goals. Therefore, the sustainability assessment in terms of social, economic, and environmental aspects substantially impacts achieving the livelihood security of any region. This study assesses the sustainable livelihood security index (SLSI) for the Eastern Indian state (West Bengal) by identifying 20 parameters and situating them within sustainable development's ecological security, economic efficiency, and social equity domains. The present study identified each selected indicator's relationship with the United Nations SDGs and adopted the notion of the Human Development Index of the UN Development Programme to construct an exclusive district-level SLS index. Three dimensions of sustainability, viz. ecological security, economic efficiency, and social equity, were adopted to measure the final SLSI. The study finds that the majority of the districts were performing substandard (SLSI value < 0.60) in terms of sustainable livelihood security (SLS), and a larger inter-district variation exists concerning economic and social domains. The SLS index may influence the design and execution of targeted interventions and policies aimed at boosting livelihoods and developing resilience by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of people's livelihoods. [GRAPHICS]