The spatial distribution of development in Europe and its underlying sustainability correlations

The majority of national governments now dedicate themselves to sustainable development as it aims to produce a long-term, positive relationship between civilization and life-supporting planetary resources. By doing so, societies have also embraced indicators as tools to provide comprehensive assessment of the current position, gauge improvement, and help set future development goals; however there remains no unanimous agreement regarding their theoretical foundation, design, nor use. The number of sustainability measures available for quantifying development is overwhelming to planners, scientists, and policymakers, thus clarification of interrelationships, redundancy, and spatial distributions is needed. First, this study reduced and described a set of 30 multi-metric sustainability indices across 36 European nations. A multivariate factor analysis identified five major dimensions (or axes) that conveyed over 80% of the total variation of the original 30 development measures. Second, spatial autoregressive analyses of childhood mortality, endangered species density, and population growth rate revealed statistical correlations with one or more of the five development factors. The five axes of sustainable development are expressions of: prosperity, equality, and governance; quality of life; ecosystem integrity; environmentally efficient happiness; and environmental management. Of these, Factor 1 (prosperity, equality, and governance) explained more than one-third of the total variance, and positively clustered in northwest Europe and negatively in southeast Europe. Results suggest that a few key indicators could be used when evaluating a country's overall development status during continental and global scale sustainability assessments. Lastly, the findings reveal an overall underrepresentation of ecological (biosphere) wellbeing within current measures of sustainable development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.