Formulation of green growth indicators and their composite index for the Asia-Pacific countries | |
| Author | Goteti, Naga Srujana |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.ET-12-03 |
| Subject(s) | Climate change mitigation Asia Climate change mitigation--Pacific Area |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Energy |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | The last decade witnessed a remarkable role by the countries in the Asia - Pacific region in terms of economic development, growth and productivity. It also saw enhanced regional co-operation, development of infrastructure leading to improved socio - economic factors and wellbeing. However, whether this was achieved at the cost of increased pressure of natural resources and declining quality of life led to the study of “Indicators for Low Carbon Green Growth in Asia - Pacific’, which aimed to provide a framework with parameters for measurement and monitoring the Asia - Pacific region’s progress towards sustainable development. The study developed and formulated indicators for the measurement of green growth at the Asia Pacific level and also at the country level. This was aided by the three step methodology defined in the study - mapping the trends; analyze green growth potential of the region and the formation of a composite index with the formulated measurement parameters, with an objective to provide insights on the green growth progress in income categorized regions of the Asia - Pacific. Interpretation of green growth was further analyzed at individual indicator level, between combinations of indicators considered at a time, at country level taking Thailand as a case study, at Asia - Pacific regional level after the construction of composite index from the formulated indicators. Interesting trends were identified for the region indicating green developments in some strategic sectors, namely, economic trade, growth and productivity. However, with linkages analysis these seem to have been at the cost of almost stagnant levels of socio - demographics and natural asset base. The region also indicated a primary degree of decoupling, an encouraging positive trend for green growth progress. Additionally, the study also explored the dynamics between Asia’s economic growth patterns, natural asset costs and how they are influenced by socio - economic parameters in the form of indicators. The study developed a composite index for representing the current status of green growth in Asia - Pacific countries based on a variant of the matching percentiles methodology. The matching percentile method was chosen over PCA and regression analysis to overcome the limitation of missing data. Equal weights were considered for all the indicators for the construction of composite index. Further, using the technique based on the classifier of income, countries were ordinal - scored for formulated measurement parameters (indicators) to derive the composite index score. Ordinal score ranging from 10-1 was given as the final score with 10 indicating the 100 percentile achievement of green growth amongst the chosen countries. Japan ranked the highest in the overall green growth with relatively high scores in the overall Socio - economic parameters, Environmental productivity and Environmental quality of life. It was thus observed that countries in Asia - Pacific have been successful on achieving ‘green growth’ on greater scale than others majorly due to high green - relevant improvements in ‘Quality of life’. |
| Year | 2012 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Energy and Climate Change (Former title: Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Change (DEECC)) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Energy Technology (ET) |
| Chairperson(s) | Kumar, Sivanappan; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Marpaung, Charles O.P.;Salam, Abdul P.; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Asian Institute of Technology Fellowship; |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2012 |