Primary Research on Assessment of Sustainable Development

The essential aspects that should be considered in assessing the progress towards sustainable development are defined as development and sustainability. Eight classes of possible assessment result are inferred. The coordinate system of sustainable development assessment, composed of sustainability indicator as X axis and development indicator as Y axis, is proposed. The defects of matrix framework of sustainable development indicators are shown, and a new kind of framework called pyramid framework is proposed in order to overcome those defects. Several indexes are analyzed and compared, then the human development index (HDI) is chosen to reflect the development aspect, and the ecological remainder, which is the difference between ecological space and ecological footprint, is chosen to reflect the sustainability aspect.