A Construction Of Human Sustainable Development Index(HSDI) And Its Application

Environment has become a global issue. The sustainable development which involved in economics, society and environment for pursuing humanity has gradually formed a common recognition. Environmental sustainable development is the basic of the full sustainable development, and the important sign for identifying the local human development level. During the sustainable development, public policy plays an important role. The evaluations of the pubic policy efficiency are the important approach to identify if local government fulfill its responsibilities of public services and improve the welfares of public. The present study focuses on the following three contents: first is the construction of Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) introduced by environment factors; second is the applications of HSDI to the measurements and comparisons of local sustainable development levels; finally, the policy efficiencies for local governments are examined from the viewpoints of the human development and sustainable development.Sustainable development based on the humanity is one of important public policy goals of local governments. Thus, the present work systematically views the sustainable development theory, public policy evaluation theory and relevant theoretic and practical outcomes, and states the background, conception and measurement approaches of the sustainable development theory. Furthermore, the concept, content and methodology of the public policy evaluations are reviewed. These provide the theoretic foundations for the present studies and the overview of the relevant outcomes. Based on the above mentioned theories, an investigated routine is brought forward.The sustainable development is based on the protection of the natural environment, and aims at the survival and development of human beings. Bases on the fact that the Human Development Index (HDI), proposed by United Nations (UN), focuses on the economical and social indices instead of environment factors, the present works proposed a new Human Sustainable Development Index frame (HSDI), by introducing the important environmental indices. Then, the HSDI is applied in the measurements and further analyses of the sustainable development of 31 provinces and municipalities in China since 1995, and compared with the evaluated results by original HDI. It is found that the HSDI well embodies the influence of the environmental factors and therefore provides a simple and reasonable approach to systematically assess the sustainable developments for the provinces and municipalities. The thesis also analyzes the measurement results of HDI for the provinces and municipalities from 1994 to 2003 from other viewpoints and attempts to make the international comparisons.Within the frame of the HDI and HSDI, the evaluations of the policy efficiency for local governments in provinces and municipalities of China are made in this thesis. The useful suggestions are proposed for policy decisions of sustainable development of local governments. The evaluations and analyses on the technical availability and scope availability of relevant policies of the provinces and municipalities provide the scientific basis for improving input-output efficiencies of public policy in part of provinces and municipalities and embodying social justice of the public policy, and provide the valuable suggestions and references for local governments to harmonize the relations between the environment protection and human development and to improve the policy efficiency.