A Review of the Evolution of Sustainable Development Indices and Environmental Performance of the Countries with a Focus on Iran

Survey of the utilization of resources and increased pollution in the world clearly shows that human activities have gone beyond the Earth's carrying capacity. This is why we see nowadays huge efforts taken by the international communities to protect the environment as the most important aspect of life on earth. Over the past years efforts have been taken to offer standard indices for environmental sustainability and performance assessment and to evaluate the environmental performance of the countries around the globe. The aim of this study was to provide an understanding of the evolution of sustainable development indices and how Iran performs in this regard. The method was to refer to documents on environmental performace issued by the relevant international organizations. According to the results, in the year 2002, Iran’s score on environmental sustainability indices was 44.5 putting Iran in the rank 104 among 142 countries while this has decreased to 39.8 in the year 2005 ranking Iran at 132 among 146 countries. According to the latest report in 2016, Iran with a score of 66.3 was ranked 105 among 180 countries showing more degredation of the environment compared to the year 2014.