AN INDEX AND INDICATOR SYSTEM TO ASSESS AND COMPARE THE ENVIRONMENT QUALITY OF CITIES ALONG THE WATERSMEDS

Abstract

Economic development has promoted investment, exploited natural resources in the provinces located along the watersheds. Economic activities indispensably conducted the strong impacts to natural resources and environment. To ensure the sustainable development, it is necessary to evaluate how the state of environment has been being effected in order to help the managers make decision. Producing information about the state of environment and interpreting them into easily understandable forms for decision makers is necessary. Based on the "Pressure - state- resposes" model of OECD, the report analyses the theorical and practical aspects , disting wishes environmental idex from indicators and proposes an index and indicator system to create basis for comparison the environmental quality between cities along the watersheds. A indicator set has been proposed for provincial level, including the pressure indicators, state indicators, impact indicators and response indicators related the soil, air and water environment, in that especially focus on indicators for water resource needed to protect. A research program to develop the environmental index-indicator system on the whole areas of the Saigon Dongnai river basin is proposed in this paper.