Local Environmental Sustainability Indicator

From being a mere topic of discussion a decade ago, sustainable development in Taiwan has gradually evolved into an implementation stage as the result of numerous researches and promotion strategies.  From 1997 to 2003, National Science Council had conducted National Sustainable Development Research Plan and other sectors’ associated plans, such as Local Sustainability Plan and evaluation counseling, both of which are promoted by Council for Economic Planning and Development and Research, Development and Evaluation Commission.  This has formed the basis for cross-disciplinary integration and reorganization on the sustainable development in Taiwan.  In recent years, National Council for Sustainable Development of Executive Yuan started adopting the research result of Sustainable Indicator System in Taiwan by National Science Council and Council for Economic Planning and Development to evaluate Taiwan’s overall national sustainable developmental status on yearly basis.

      Sustainable development indicator (or sustainability indicator) has gone through a rapid development since a decade ago; it is receiving growing influence in the international community.  The Environment Sustainable Index (ESI), which was initiated in the 1990’s by World Economic Forum (WEF), has a leading indication system status and far-reaching impact on national policies in terms of evaluating and ranking more than a hundred countries for four consecutive years from 1999 to 2002.  Taiwan was officially included in the ranking for the first time in 2005, but only ranked no. 145 amongst 146 countries, much to the shock and attention of all sectors in Taiwan.  In the same year, Taiwan adopted an active strategy and assigned the Environmental Protection Administration and WEF Working Group to undertake direct contact and communication with ESI.

      With the growing importance of the aforementioned indicators of environmental sustainability and local sustainability, and the fact that about half of Taiwan's cities and prefectures have already implemented relevant projects, it is all the more meaningful to come up with a forward-looking, credible, and objective indicator for local sustainability.

The opionions and suggestions