A new Environmental Poverty Index (EPI) for monitoring system in the SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessement) procedure

Abstract

In this paper, the authors apply the HPI index of UNDP 1995 to clarify the poverty levels of the poor living in six environmental poverty sectors according to ADB, 2008, in order to form a new Environmental Poverty Index (EPI) of national and provincial levels prospectively. This index is easy to communicate worldwide. To clarify the poverty levels of the environmental poverty in environmental sectors, a set of six environmental poor livelihood indicators (EPLI) is also proposed. The index and indicators are fit well the requirement of a monitoring system of the SEA procedure by Circular No 05/2008/TT-BTNMT issued by Vietnam Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Two methods are proposed to calculate EPI: Unweight method: EPI= Σ= n i HPIi n 1 1 Weight method: EPI = Σ Σ = = × n i i i n i HPIi C C 1 1 / where: i - the environmental poverty sector number i; n - the total number of environmental poverty sectors (imax=6); HPIi - the UNDP's human poverty index of the environmental poverty sector i; Ci - the weight of HPIi.