Ecological Intensity of Well-being, A New Approach to measuring Sustainable Development in Iran

Sustainability is basically an exchange challenge that shows environment is under pressure to improve the human’s quality of well-being. Some of the introduced indicators, such as ecological footprint, environmental sustainability, environmental performance and human development, have received more attention. However, the lack of a comprehensive index that considers both economic and environmental criteria to measure sustainability can be seen. This subject seems to have been considered in the ecological intensity of well-being. Dietz. Rosa and York first introduced the index in 2012, defining it as the per capita pressure imposed on the environment for each unit of human well-being to measure sustainable development. For the first time in Iran, this study calculates the value of this index for the years 1996 to 2017 for Iran and predicts it for the years 2018 to 2022 using ARMA models and R software. The results show that despite the increase in the ecological footprint over the past three decades, the value of the EIWB has been almost halved, which indicates the improvement of life expectancy during this period.