The publication of the Brundtland Report titled 'Our Common Future' in 1987, gave an
impetus to the concept of sustainable development. In the post Brundtland era, nations all
over the world are concerned whether the development policies followed by them are
sustainable or not. Sustainability Indicators are in the category of green national accounts
and are different from conventional indicators of economic growth. The main areas of
discussion in this thesis are firstly to interpret the Brundtland definition of sustainable
development in terms of satisfaction of needs. A simple interpretation of the Brundtland
Commission's definition of sustainable development is that for development to be
sustainable per capita human well being should be non- declining over time. Human well
being depends on the utility of individuals and utility is dependent on the consumption of
material needs and non- material needs. Although the importance of sustainability
indicators is considerable, the challenge lies in developing frameworks to value
environmental goods and services and integrating economic and environmental
accounting into the same platform. The study focuses on the importance of measuring
non material needs or assigning monetized values to assess natural capital for strong
sustainable development. The thesis is spread over different chapters focusing on some
issues related to sustainability indicators such as weak and strong sustainability,
importance of critical natural assets in maintaining quality of life on earth, development
of Environmental Net National Product, environmental valuation techniques and dose
response functions to mention a few. The thesis describes the calculation of a clean air
index for measuring quality of life in selected urban areas of India. At the end, the thesis
highlights some limitations of developing sustainability indicators and suggests new areas
of research in the areas of resource, environment and growth economics.
