Development of a New Sustainability Index: Adaptation of Ecological Footprint to Decoupling Index

Recently such sustainability indexes as the Decoupling Index (DI) and Ecological Footprint (EF) have been developed. However, since DI measures sustainability by only using a single environmental load, its evaluation is incomplete. On the other hand, since EF is a sustainability index based on environmental loads and carrying capacity, its evaluation is not concerned with economic aspects. Both tools have disadvantages that must be improved. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new sustainability index that solves the above problems and introduces a method that measures environmental benefits with EF and the sustainability of Japanese agriculture and forestry using a new sustainability index.