Comparison and Analysis on Different Methods of Sustainability Evaluation at Home and Abroad

This article introduces history,methodology and application of sustainability evaluation methods such as environmental sustainability index (ESI),ecological footprint (EF),emergy ratios (renewability and emergy sustainability index) (EmPIs) and sustainability evaluation indicators.ESI is suitable for multi-national scale,EF and EmPIs for multi-national,sub-national,regional and local scales,while sustainability evaluation indicators are only for small ecosystems.We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages among these methods:ESI provides us large information,but with complicated calculation process;EF has a simple calculation progress,but lack of some sustainable information such as soil loss and forest destruction;EmPIs considers all the situations which can be very flexible according to specific systems and has a relatively simple calculation process,but its theory is a little difficult for non-ecological researchers to understand;Sustainability evaluation indicators are flexible,but from a subjective view.Analyses above which point out application scale of each method and its abvantoges and disadvantages are useful references to the choosing of suitable sustainability evalution methods choosing evaluation methodologies.