FEEM Sustainability Index (FEEM SI) is an aggregate index, which provides future projections of sustainability
at the national and macro-regional scale over time. FEEM SI addresses the necessity of “going beyond
GDP” within the well-being assessment. It manages to summarise and merge the information derived by a
selection of relevant sustainability indicators chosen among the most reliable international indicator sets. 

FEEM SI analysis is built on the recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model ICES-SI that
provides a comprehensive picture of the sustainability of countries over time. The model calculates the index
based on various economic, social, and environmental assumptions, thereby providing useful information
regarding the effects that different polices have on sustainability. Another important aspect of FEEM SI
is the aggregation approach, which is based on experts’ elicitation and exploits all the interactions across
indicators.

Indicators structure

In line with the sustainability theory, the structure of FEEM SI 2011 is composed of the three main pillars
of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental. For each of these dimensions, the FEEM SI 2011
indicators’ tree covers the following main areas of research on sustainability assessment: economic growth
drivers, GDP per capita, economic exposure, population density, well-being, social vulnerability, energy,
air quality and natural endowments.

FEEM SI 2011 maps

The FEEM SI 2011 provides a synthetic overview (overall and by pillar) of sustainability across the World
in 2011 through FEEM Sustainability Maps.

The best performing countries within the FEEM SI 2011 share homogeneously high levels of economic,
social, and environmental sustainability, while the components are less equally distributed for the bottom countries.

Future perspectives 2011-2020

The ability to project indicators over time is a feature of FEEM SI, which makes it much more than a
simple assessment tool, and extends its potential as a real policy simulation environment. The table below
presents the changes of FEEM SI values from 2011 to 2020.

The EU27 presents a general increase in the economic pillar and improvements in the environmental pillar.
These two components explain the positive evolution of overall sustainability, even if the social pillar shows
either a smaller increase or a decline.

Policy scenarios

FEEM SI allows also for the comparison of different policy scenarios aimed to improve the overall sustainability over time. In the FEEM SI annual report, a “Social Policy” and an “Environmental Policy” have been separately evaluated.
together with an additional scenario, based on a multi-faced policy called “Sustainable Development Policy” (“SD Policy”), including actions on all sustainability dimensions.

Even though the SD Policy negatively affects the economic sustainability, it appears to be an effective intervention
at the global level. The mutual and consistent improvement in the social and environmental pillars boosts
overall sustainability. This progress goes along with a relatively small variation in World GDP per capita.

Read more

• FEEM SI 2011: Annual report (ita) (eng)
• FEEM SI website