The Ex-Ante Evaluation of Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

This paper describes the methodology and main results from an overall assessment on future achievement of sustainable development goals. The proposed approach consists of a model-based, looking forward composite sustainable development index—FEEM sustainability index—projected to the future. It represents a first experiment to reproduce the future dynamics of sustainable development indicators over time and worldwide and to assess future sustainability under different scenarios. The assessment presented here is relevant under different viewpoints. First, it has a very broad nature in terms of both geographical coverage and meaningfulness: it considers the multi-dimensional structure of sustainable development by combining relevant indicators belonging to economic, social and environmental pillars for the whole world. Second, the modelling framework to compute future trends of indicators relies upon a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model. This is an ideal tool to look simultaneously at the development of many indicators, their potential interactions and trade-offs, and more in general to the consequences of economic development and/or policies aiming to increase performance in one or more indicators; it allows measuring the overall sustainability under alternative scenarios, across countries and over time. Finally, regarding the construction of the composite indicator, the application of fuzzy measures and Choquet integral increases substantially the model capability allowing taking into account the interactions that exist among the three main pillars of sustainability and the considered indicators.     

实施可持续发展战略对我国环境政策体系的影响分析

当今社会,环境问题越来越受到人们的重视。随着人们对环境问题认识的逐步提高,为解决这些问题制定了相应的环境政策。作为规范政府、企业和个人环境行为的指南,环境政策既是实现环保目标的指导性原则和调控手段,又是促进经济社会可持续发展的有力保障。广义的环境政策,包含环境法律、法规以及各种管理措施和经济手段。处于经济起飞阶段的我国,如何制定可持续发展的环境政策体系,成为日益紧迫的课题。     

人口政策与人力资源开发

人口政策是宏观调控人口数量和质量的政策 ,是对国家未来发展具有决定性影响的战略政策。一个国家的人口政策如何 ,将会极大地影响这个国家的人口发展 ,影响人力资源的发展方向和发展趋势 ,进而影响到国家未来社会经济的发展和国家的综合国力。我国的人口政策 ,在促使人力资源数量与社会经济发展相适应 ,提高人力资源的身体素质和科学文化素质 ,促进人力资源的合理利用方面 ,发挥了巨大的作用 ,产生了巨大的经济效益和社会效益     

Indicators of development in Wisconsin counties: 1970

This research focused on the problem of measuring economic and social ‘development’. Existing theories of economic and social change were used to select important indicators of development. For each indicator, principal components analysis was used to collapse several related variables into a single index. The indexes were labeled economic base, economic growth, personal economic opportunity, health inputs, health status, educational inputs, and educational attainment. In each case, selection of variables and indexes were constrained by two factors: (1) the data had to be available from secondary sources; (2) the selection of the indicators, and the procedure, had to be easily understood and cheaply and quickly repeatable by state or local agency personnel. In general the indexes were consistent with each other and the variables enter into the indexes with the expected sign. The high correlation among the indexes suggests that they may indeed measure some underlying attribute, development. There is no rigorous or absolute measure of development against which to check the validity of the indexes. However, the results have been judged ‘reasonable’ measures of development by the state agency staff and local development groups which have utilized the indexes.     

Determinants of Environmental Behavior in Societies in Transition: Evidence from Five European Countries

Countries of Central and East Europe are in a process of economic, social and political transition. This process provides a unique opportunity for cross-national studies in a context of social transformation and radical infrastructural changes. In the present study, we compared environmental behavior, and the factors affecting it, of citizens from five European countries with diverse economic and social status. Outcomes of the present survey suggest that people's attitudes towards environmental issues and economy-environment trade-offs can be considered reliable predictors, contrary to political attitudes which did not prove to be important determinants of environmental behavior. However, one should be aware of the differences in individual factors affecting citizens' environmental behavior, since the latter cannot be considered as a linear function of a country's development and modernization.     

Environmental hazard and migration intentions in a coastal area in Ghana: a case of sea flooding

Recently, there has been significant debate about whether ‘environmental migration’ can constitute a form of adaptation to environmental change, as opposed to forced or flight migration. The Foresight Report on Migration and Environmental Change (2011) suggested environmental factors are one driver of migration, as well as political, social, economic and demographic drivers, and that—under the right conditions—migration can be a form of adaptation to changing climatic conditions. However, this is dependent on migrants having adequate social and financial capital to undertake beneficial types of migration; it further argues that environmental change may result in ‘trapped populations’ whereby people who lack the necessary resources to re-establish livelihoods elsewhere may be left exposed to increasingly severe environmental shocks and stresses in situ. Research on the climate-migration nexus in West Africa has largely focused on out-migration from the semi-arid Sahel with more limited evidence about how sea flooding interacts with migration flows. This paper attempts to help fill this knowledge gap. Using data from a representative survey of households across three coastal communities in Ghana’s Volta River Delta, this paper concludes that exposure to sea flooding may not be a primary cause of out-migration as other community, economic and political factors influence migration intentions and decisions. Thus, it is important for planned adaptation interventions to be strengthened in situ to enable households, particularly farming households, sustain their livelihoods.     

Are Theories About Social Capital Empirically Supported? Evidence from the Farming Sector

Social capital is the bond that links societies together and without which there is little opportunity for economic growth or individual well-being. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to the literature by providing an analytically reliable concept of social capital and a methodological tool for empirically testing a theoretical model of how social capital is built. Based upon a decomposition of the concept of social capital characterising three main dimensions (i.e., structural, relational and cognitive), for each specific group of individuals under study the structural equation model allows us: (1) to confirm the multidimensional construct of social capital; (2) to measure the interrelation between its different attributes and; (3) to set a solid basis for additional research on the effects of social capital. This approach has been empirically applied to Andalusian (southern Spain) farmers as case study. We believe this research to be a fundamental starting point for informing social capital policymakers and helping them implement the necessary tools to facilitate sustainable development processes at different moments in time as it takes into account the multidimensional, contextual and dynamic nature of the concept.     

Quality of Life in Hong Kong: Past Accomplishments And Future Prospects

Following several decades of rapid economic expansion, development in Hong Kong has arrived at a new crossroads. The pace of economic growth is no longer as rapid as during earlier decades, competition with other East Asian societies has grown more acute and many of the territory’s recurrent, sometimes hidden, social problems appear to be undermining selected aspects of Hong Kong’s quality of life. And Hong Kong’s political tensions with the central government in Beijing have become more confrontational since its return in 1997 to Chinese political sovereignty. This article: (1) summarizes the current state of social development in Hong Kong; (2) identifies the major social, political and economic challenges that confront Hong Kong at the beginning of a new development decade; (3) compares selected aspects of Hong Kong’s social development with that of other East Asian societies; and (4) suggests a variety of policy options that are available to leaders in Hong Kong’s for promoting a more balanced approach to social and economic development. The article also illustrates the use of social reports and social reporting in advancing development assessment and planning.     

Measuring Well-Being and Progress

Well-being is becoming a concept which is more and more involved in any world development consideration. A large amount of work is being carried out to study measurements of well-being, including a more holistic vision on the development and welfare of a country. This paper proposes an idea of well-being and progress being in equilibrium with each other. This is distant from the two extreme positions: poor but happy, and rich then happy; too romantic the first, and reductive the second. After a short explanation on the meaning of Objective and Subjective well-being, we show some interesting relations between economic and social variables, and we propose a new index to measure the well-being and progress of the countries: the Well-being & Progress Index (WIP). It includes several aspects of well-being and progress, like human rights, economic well-being, equality, education, research, quality of urban environment, ecological behaviours, subjective well-being, longevity, and violent crime. The most frequently used indexes usually only focus on some aspects, like ecology, or economy, or policy, or education, or happiness, and so forth. On the contrary, this new WIP index allows a global and well-balanced vision, thanks to the large range of indicators used, and how representative they are.     

COMBINING SOCIAL,ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS TO MEASURE SUSTAINABLE HUMAN WELL-BEING

In this paper an attempt is made to illustrate some ways in which social, economic and environmental indicators can be combined to tell a coherent story about the sustainability of human well-being. Using examples from the fields of health, the fishing industry and energy, it is argued that one's success at constructing a single comprehensive system of indicators of human well-being will always be limited by one's particular point of departure from social, economic or environmental indicators. If that is indeed the case, then it would be helpful for researchers to abandon attempts to construct single comprehensive utopian systems in favour of agreed upon lists of important goals, indicators and monitoring procedures that can be used to implement progressive social change.     

Does globali zation affect human well-being?

The prevailing theorizing of globalization’s influence of human well-being suggests to assess both the favorable and unfavorable outcomes. This study formulates a dialectical model, adopts a comprehensive globalization measure and uses a three-wave panel data during 1980–2000 to empirically test direct and indirect effects of global flows’ human consequences. The outcomes from random effect modeling reveal significant positive impacts of political globalization, whereas economic and social globalization do not generate favorable influences when development level and regional differences are operated as controls. The overall globalization index is found to generate expected favorable influence on an overall human development index. Within developing countries, globalization’s human influence was not as significant as in industrial countries, however. Several hypotheses about globalization’s potential negative effects through increasing societal instabilities and reducing state power and social spending are not supported in analysis. It is concluded that globalization identified by increased global flows and exchanges contributes rather than hampers progress in human welfare.     

Masculinity,Money, and the Postponement of Parenthood in Nigeria

In southeastern Nigeria, several interconnected processes of social change are combining to delay parenthood. Most of the demographic and social sciences literature examining the postponement of parenthood has paid primary attention to women. To address this gap, this article foregrounds the changing social landscape of masculinity as a significant context within which to situate these demographic changes. At the core of Nigerian men's perceptions, decisions, and behaviors with regard to delaying fatherhood is a fundamental contradiction, one that seems to be common in many settings—at least many African settings—of contemporary demographic transition. The contradiction is that while the postponement of parenthood is associated historically with positive social and economic indicators, when Nigerian men articulate their rationales for delaying fatherhood (and marriage) they commonly describe feelings of uncertainty connected to a sense of struggle and deprivation. This article connects men's anxieties about—and delays embarking on—marriage and parenthood to their experiences of economic uncertainty, and specifically to the perceived need for money as the foundation for successful reproduction.     

Calculating a GPI for Liaoning Province of China

The conventional equation of economic well-being with the gross domestic product (GDP) has dominated policy thinking for at least 50 years. However, a variety of authors have pointed to the social and environmental costs of economic development and called for more comprehensive and more representative measures of progress to be developed. Therefore, a variety of ‘adjusted’ indicators have been developed. The robustness and reliability of these indicators is still a contentious issue. But these attempts raise important questions about sustainable development and pose an important challenge to conventional thinking about the relationship between economic progress, well-being and sustainability. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one of the indicators of measuring sustainable development. Apply it to Liaoning Province, this paper evaluates Liaoning’s GPI from 1978 to 2011. GPI, Per Capita GPI and GDP of Liaoning are compared with each other. It is concluded that GDP and Per Capita GDP of Liaoning grow much faster than GPI and Per Capita GPI. Grouped all components of GPI into three categories (economy, environment and Social), it shows that social and environmental development lags behind economic growth in Liaoning. This paper is till now a unique application of GPI indicator in Liaoning and China’s provincial level and also contribution to the continuing development of the methods and results for the Index of Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Policy implications are given finally.     

A sociological implication of environment in social development

This study, which identifies the sociological implication of the environment in social development, was based on the notion that environmental research should recognize that the environment consists of 3 main, interdependent components: the natural environment, the man-made environment, and the social environment. The study first examines these components of environment and their internal mechanisms and, after noting that sociology has failed to explore the interdependence among these components, offers a new notion of ecosystem that modifies and expands the framework offered by Duncan's POET model (increased population creates pressure for technological change, increases urbanization, and creates more pollution). Next, the paper examines the emerging natural and social environmental problems caused by industrialization. The concluding section reviews the development of concepts about the relationship between the environment and social development based on the assumption of limited natural resources. Because it is now understood that it is more appropriate to consider the limit of ecological capacity, it is important to learn to measure social development by the successful achievement of an adaptation or by harmonization with the environment, rather than by material growth. This requires a conceptualization of man as being part of, rather than independent of, nature. New indicators must be developed to measure the degree of social development achieved.     

江苏省残疾人社会保障的现状调查与对策研究

享有社会保障是残疾人的基本权利,为残疾人提供全面的社会保障不仅是社会公平和正义的体现,更是衡量各国经济发展和人权进步的重要标志。本文在2006年“全国残疾人第二次抽样调查”数据的基础上,分析了江苏省残疾人社会保障的现状、主要影响因素及制度建设情况,提出了完善江苏省社会保障体系的对策建议。     

Networks Versus Need: Drivers of Urban Out-Migration in the Brazilian Amazon

As urbanization rates rise globally, it becomes increasingly important to understand the factors associated with urban out-migration. In this paper, we examine the drivers of urban out-migration among young adults in two medium-sized cities in the Brazilian Amazon—Altamira and Santarém—focusing on the roles of social capital, human capital, and socioeconomic deprivation. Using household survey data from 1,293 individuals in the two cities, we employ an event history model to assess factors associated with migration and a binary logit model to understand factors associated with remitting behavior. We find that in Altamira, migration tends to be an individual-level opportunistic strategy fostered by extra-local family networks, while in Santarém, migration tends to be a household-level strategy driven by socioeconomic deprivation and accompanied by remittances. These results indicate that urban out-migration in Brazil is a diverse social process, and that the relative roles of extra-local networks versus economic need can function quite differently between geographically proximate but historically and socioeconomically distinct cities.     

A Comparison of the Well-Being of Agricultural and Non Agricultural Households Using a Multicriterial Approach

The territorial approach of rural development requires taking into account economic, social and environmental features. Therefore, among the goals of the rural development policy the well-being of the target population cannot be disregarded. However, well-being is a multidimensional phenomenon and its measure could be complicated since many indicators (with different scale, units of measure, burden, trends) have to be estimated and analyzed. With a composite indicator which summarizes a bulk of information this concern can be overcome. A multicriteria approach of aggregation is proposed because cardinal aggregation involving in undesirable compensatory property.     

城市可持续发展能力环境影响评价经济模型

本文在传统的城市宏观经济运行过程模型的基础上,将世界银行所提出的真实储蓄加以修正,并引入到城市经济运行模式中,其中既考虑了人口(人口的增长)、经济(国内生产总值的增长速度)因素,又考虑到了社会因素(国内生产总值中的经常性教育投资和科研经费留存)、环境(大气、水环境污染)及资源(矿产)等因素,提出了城市可持续发展能力环境影响评价经济模型,并以此为基础分析了西安市的可持续发展能力。     

Livelihood Assets and Vulnerability Context of Marine Park Community Development in Malaysia

This study assesses the community’s standard of living using the well-known Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) as an analytical framework within the Marine Park Areas (MPAs) in Peninsular Malaysia. We focus on livelihood sustainability and environmental issues challenging MPAs. In order to protect and conserve vulnerable marine life, our efforts assess the residents’ wellbeing and identify major environmental issues associated with MPAs. The major findings of this study indicate that social and physical assets of the societies within the Marine Park Island improved with economic development, but they continue to lack in human capital, and financial and environmental assets. It is expected that this study would assist policy makers to formulate enhanced policies for conserving marine diversity as well as to improve the socio-economic status of the communities that reside therein.