Greening the Human Development Index: Accounting for all pillars of sustainability

Chuluun Togtokh, Science Secretary of Sustainable Development Institute at National University of Mongolia, Science Director of Green Development Policy Institute and Vice-Chair of Mongolia's Global Change National Committee

Economic growth is an engine for development. However, there are two key issues from sustainability point of view that need to be addressed; that of the equal distribution of wealth among populations within countries, and whether economic growth itself can be green. In order to address these issues, I am proposing a new sustainability index composed of wealth, equity and environment.

In 1992, the first Earth Summit defined sustainable development as having three pillars: economic, social and environmental. As a global species we have had remarkable success with the first two pillars. But, ultimately, our failure to address global sustainability lies in our inability to tackle all three dimensions simultaneously. Reductionism, fragmentation, division, and self-interest to keep one's 'own territory', are reasons for such failure. The UN Human Development Index (HDI) is indicative of this fragmented approach, as it does not account for the environmental dimension.



The HDI has set straightforward targets for countries and international organisations for more than twenty years. Its success and influence owe much to its simplicity. It brilliantly summarises quality of life in a given country using health, education, and income levels. Yet it fails to cover an increasingly vital question for humankind: how sustainable is that development? In the current HDI, developed nations and oil-rich countries are placed highly without regard to how much their development paths are costing the planet and humankind's future development. There is little regard for the resulting fundamental changes to the Earth System.

As the UN prepares for Rio+20, it must lead by example. It should include an environmental indicator and so change the HDI to a Human Sustainable Development Index. Nations' CO2 emissions per capita provide a simple, available and measurable indicator of environmental impact. They also reveal a somewhat unsurprising dynamic – that countries with faster HDI improvements also experience a more rapid increase in CO2 emissions per capita. The bottom line: recent progress in the HDI has come at the cost of global warming.

I am also proposing the inclusion of a social index, which accounts societal equality, instead of health and education as in the HDI. Societal equity can provide a good indication of wellbeing, for example, in societies where the income differences between rich and poor are smaller, health trends and life expectancy are better, and numeracy and literacy scores tend to be higher. Community life is also stronger, with more trust between citizens, and smaller prison populations. In summary, societal equality is critical for social resilience, and better captures social sustainability.

To find out how the inclusion of environmental and social indices affects the HDI, I included per capita carbon emissions and equity levels, and recalculated the sustainability index, using the UN's published methodology. My resulting Human Sustainable Development Index shows very interesting results, when compared with the HDI:

Australia, the US and Canada fall straight out of the top ten

• US drops from 4th to 64th;
• Australia slides by 52 places from 2nd to 54th;
• Canada falls from 6th to 38th; and

More equal societies such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Japan received the highest rankings

• Sweden rises from 10th to 1st;
• Denmark moves from 16st to 2nd;
• Japan from 12th to 4th position;

The implications of the Sustainability Index go beyond the symbolic. The HDI has shifted the target of development beyond the almighty dollar, but the new Human Sustainable Development Index, or Sustainability Index completely shifts development targets into social and environmental resilience building, addressing challenges such as climate change and societal equality. It brings new insights into governance for sustainability because better societal equality and green development pathways depend on policy decisions made by the government and institutions.


Courtesy of the stakeholder forum