How can a country's progress be measured?? should environmental facts play a role?

I have a philosophy project on this...so we need to find problems with how a country's progress is measured and figure out if environmental facts should play a big part or no, especially in today's day. tHANKS!! Bless!How can a country's progress be measured?? should environmental facts play a role?you are approaching it the wrong way

Look back into History and see how other ancient civilizations ventured..

History here is the teacher



You will find that the height of civilizations went hand in hand with their environmental conditions.

this applied to Babylonia ,Sumeria,the Mayas .Egypt

When the ecology was gone so was the economy.



Genghis Khan killed countries by burning the forests and filling the wells with sand,this turned them into deserts (which are still deserts today)



When a countries water is good and plenty so are their chances for agriculture ,and with a large and productive agriculture many people can live, eat and work to make things and export goods with subsequent heights in their economy.



There are those nations with little land perhaps poor environments who rely on trade for their own healthy economy,but their trade in turns relies on those countries who can produce abundantly



England,Spain ,Holland and the other European colonial countries in the past,are proof of that .Their Renaissances and wealth was build on Environments in Africa,Indonesia,India or the Americas.



they became rich because of Environments far away

but rich environments nevertheless.



So with economies the Environment always was the key element



And how a country approached the Environment ,ie with sustainable methods or non sustainable methods of agriculture,ensured for how long they lasted.



Mayas,Egyptians ,used very sophisticated sustainable forms of farming and their economy and thus civilizations lasted many 100dreds even thousands of years

http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/ite鈥?/a>

Inca terraced gardens and Aztec Chinampas survive unto this day after 800 years



Modern day farming does not and we are in big trouble world wide, already after 100 years.

having used up, wasted and destroyed a lot of land.

Some farming methods tire the soil in 3 to 4 years.How can a country's progress be measured?? should environmental facts play a role?good question. gdp has many faults, most countries now also use some variety of human development index.



you might find this useful, a graph of HDI against environmental footprint for various countries and regions;

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84625