Green development index released in Beijing

Professor Li Xiaoxi,Harvard Fellow, principal investigator of the green development index report series, Deputy Director of Beijing Normal University (BNU) Academic Committee, and Academic Adviser of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics delivers a speech at the launching ceremony of "Green Development Index Report Series" on Dec 8, 2014 in Beijing. [Photo/cnr.cn]

A series of reports summarizing green development achievements were released to public at China National Radio New Media Building in Beijing on Monday.

The launch ceremony, called "Green Development Index Report Series", was co-sponsored by School of Economics and Resource Management of Beijing Normal University and China National Radio.

Three reports, including two Chinese-English bilingual edition ones named Human Green Development Report 2014 and China Green Development Index Report 2014: Regional Comparison, and a Chinese edition report called China Green Finance Report 2014, were released to the public respectively by Professor Li Xiaoxi, Doctor Pan Jiancheng and Xia Guang.

Professor Li is a Harvard Fellow, principal investigator of the green development index report series, Deputy Director of Beijing Normal University (BNU) Academic Committee, and Academic Adviser of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE).

Doctor Pan Jiancheng is the deputy director of China Economic Monitoring & Analysis Center of National Bureau of Statistics of China.

Xia Guang is the director of the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy of Ministry of Environmental Protection of China.

Professor Li introduced the research background of the report series and their features respectively and specifically presented the research conclusions of Human Green Development Report 2014, which was jointly conducted by School of Economics and Resource Management of BNU and Institute of Development Studies at SWUFE.

The Human Green Development Index (HGDI) of 123 countries are comprehensively measured and the HGDI rankings are conducted using 12 fundamental indicators, namely extreme poverty, drinking water, education, sanitation, health, income, energy, climate change, air pollution, land, forest, and ecology.

Among the 123 sampled countries, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Germany, Latvia and Japan rank at the top.

The measuring results show that a country's performance in the human green development tends to be highly related with its economic development stage.

Most of the top places in the ranking are occupied by developed countries, with Sweden in the first place, while the newly industrialized countries and other developing countries remain at a relatively low human green development level, with the last 10 places in the ranking almost all African countries.

China ranks at the 86th, which indicates that China shoulders great responsibilities and has a long way to go in the green development field.

Dr. Pan introduced the framework and Green Development Index indicator system of the China Green Development Index Report 2014: Regional Comparison, written by School of Economics and Resource Management of Beijing Normal University, Institute of Development Studies of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and China Economic Monitoring & Analysis Center of National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The report is also recognized as one of the key program of Natural Science Foundation of China.

"The ranking studied about 30 provinces and 100 cities and presented the recent progress and changes of different provinces and cities through Green Development Checkup," said Pan.