नेपालका राणा प्रधानमन्त्रीहरु

 

The balance between economic development, social progress and environmental responsibility is known as sustainable development.

According to Kennedy et al. (2007), a sustainable city can only be one for which the inflow of material and energy resources, and the disposal of wastes, do not exceed the capacity of the city’s surrounding environment. In other words, for achieving environmental sustainability urban consumption must match or be below what the natural environment — such as forests, soil and water bodies— can provide, and the resulting pollutants must not overwhelm the environment’s ability to provide resources to humans and other members of the ecosystem.

For achieving goal of building sustainable cities, we should adopt the various indicators, parameters or value which points to, provide information and describes the state of environment or area with a significance extending beyond that directly associated with a parameter value.

The main challenge for today’s cities is to manage the heavy dependence on ecosystem services, which results in the depletion of natural resources and biodiversity and the efforts to prevent, reduce or mitigate and adapt to climate change, while prioritizing public health and quality of life.

As we know, researchers agree that sustainability depends on social, economic, environmental and governance factors.  Before planning of sustainable cities, those factors should be studied on the basis of suitable indicators. So, the selection of the suitable indicators is important task for city actors and planners.

Different people living in the different place have their own value, so indicators must be able to take account different locations, people, culture and institutions. So, indicators can play a vital role in how human activities affect the environment.

 

 

 

 

A number of indicator tools are described below.

Indicator	Description
China Urban Sustainability Index	The China Urban Sustainability Index (Li et al., 2014), funded by the Urban China Initiative, is a report into the sustainability of nearly 200 Chinese cities. The indicator set was developed from the 2011 China Sustainability Index as well as the China Urbanization Index, using the indicator framework set out in the 2011 CSI. It is an extremely scalable tool, as it was developed for cities ranging in size from 200 000 people to 20 million people.
City Blueprint	City Blueprints is a tool developed by Waternet Amsterdam and the KWR Water Cycle Research Institute to provide a quick scan and baseline assessment of water sustainability in a city. The overall aim is to provide European city managers and other stakeholders with the base knowledge to implement integrated urban water management and thereby contribute to overall sustainability.
EEA Urban Metabolism Framework	The European Environmental Agency has studied the possibility of developing an Urban Metabolism indicator system. This is a way to evaluate the sustainability of a city based in metabolic flows rather than performance or current status.
European Green Capital Award	The European Green Capital Award is an annual award that recognises an outstanding commitment to environmental practices in one European city (Berrini & Bono, 2011). Cities are required to have at least 100 000 inhabitants to participate, but there is no upper limit.
European Green City Tool	This self-assessment tool looks at city governance (so it represents yes/no answers about the approach a city is taking and is not about quantitative, scalar indicators) in the 12 indicator areas covered by the European Green Capital Award.
European Green City Index	The European Green City Index is an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of 30 European cities ranging in size from less than 1 million people to more than 3 million people (Watson, 2009).
European Green Leaf Award	Inspired by the success of the Green Capital Award, the European Commission launched the European Green Leaf Award in 2015, which is a similar competition, but for smaller cities, i.e. with populations of between 20,000 and 100,000 people. The European Green Leaf recognises the cities and towns which are most committed to green growth and a better environment.
Global City Indicators Program	The Global City Indicators Facility (GCIF) has developed and implemented a standardized global indicator set that allows for performance evaluation on an international scale (Global Cities Institute, 2007).
Indicators for Sustainability	The Indicators for Sustainability report (Dekker et al., 2012) from Sustainable Cities International took a different approach to the development of an indicator set compared to the other frameworks mentioned so far.
Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC)	The Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC) is a toolkit to help European cities implement the sustainability goals of the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities. It is a freely-accessible and flexible way for cities to stimulate sustainable and integrated urban development in line with Europe 2020 guidelines and objectives (van Dijken, Dorenbos & Kamphof, 2012).
STAR Community Rating System	The Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating Communities (STAR) Community Rating System is a toolbox developed for community leaders in the USA to assess the sustainability of their community, set targets for the future, and measure progress along the way (Lynch et al., 2011).
Urban Audit Cities Statistics	The Urban Audit, run by Eurostat, is currently the largest urban data collection effort in the EU (Eurostat is the Directorate-General of the European Commission responsible for collecting and distributing statistics for the European Union, as well as harmonising data collection efforts across EU member states).