CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Environmental sustainability involves making decisions and taking actions that are in the interests of protecting the natural world, with particular emphasis on preserving the capability of the environment to support human life. It is an important topic at the present time, as people are realizing the full impact that businesses and individuals can have on the environment. For many people, the basic idea of sustainability focuses greatly on depletion of resources. Others consider that sustainability covers also (irreversible) pollution, conservation of nature and other environmental and ecological aspects. Some include the aspects of quality of human life and the human wellbeing. Everyone complains about the environmental sustainability situation in developing countries. They say we are in dire need of a total turnover. The citizens believe it is the duty of the government to sustain the environment of a state and the government attributes that responsibility to its citizens too. The best way to define and measure sustainability is often contested. Economists usually emphasize an accounting approach that focuses on the maintenance of capital stocks. Some in the environmental realm focus on natural resource depletion and whether the current rates of resource use can be sustained into the distant future.
The Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) is a composite index that tracks a diverse set of socio-economic,