Approaches to Measure HGDI

Abstract

To ensure the comparability of each country in green development level, all HGDI indicators we adopt are relative indicators, which can be divided into two specific categories. One is intensity indicator which is a ratio between one statistic measurement and another reference measurement (such as population, area, and volume). Employing such indicators avoids the influence of differences in population, area, etc. on aggregate-level indicators. For instance, we use such indicators for the measurements of energy efficiency, climate change, etc. The other is the structural indicator which displays the components in relation to the whole. We use this type of indicator to measure the extent of soundness of each country in the fields of forest area, terrestrial protected area, biodiversity, etc. or to evaluate the effectiveness of government efforts in improving drinking water, sanitary facilities and other public areas. Obviously, the relative indicators also allow the effective calculation among different dimensional indicators.