An Analytical- Comparative Study on Measurement Methods of Sustainable Development

Agenda 21 has been approved about two decades ago with an emphasis on formulating and applying sustainable development indicators. However; a thorough consensus has not yet been formed on the indicators for clarifying sustainability to be designed and utilized nor have comprehensive and complete methods been accepted by elites and experts in the world. Nevertheless, numerous indicators have been proposed in recent years to judge sustainable development; to the extent that sustainability indicators of some countries are annually published by international bodies.Accordingly, the literature used for sustainability measurement is being rapidly developed at national and international levels.This, paper is dealing in the first stage with sustainability development indicators as well as some of the most important measuring models and methods. With the usage of data released by 130 countries, the analytical-comparative method is used in the next phase to analyze the inter-relations between measurement methods utilizing SPSS software in order to determine their concerned similarities and differences.