The Little Green Data Book provides approximately 50 indicators for more than 200 countries based on World Development Indicators 2016 and its online database. Key indicators are organized under the headings of agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, energy, emission and pollution, and water and sanitation. Data is presented for the regions of East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Several of these indicators have the potential to measure progress on the SDGs. These indicators measure the use of resources and the way human activities affect both the natural and the built environment including: measures of natural resources (forest, water, and cultivable land) and degradation (pollution, deforestation, loss of habitat, and loss of biodiversity).
The 2016 edition measures sustainability by expanding the conventional way of measuring national saving to include natural resource deplate and degradation of the environment as well as investment in human capital.
Although most countries are on a sustainable path, nearly 45 per cent of the 136 countries analyzed in this book are depleting their "wealth" even as they show growth in annual income.
The Little Green Data Book provides key environmental data for over 200 economies, based on the World Development Indicators 2015 and its online database.