Spanish regions and sustainable development: measurement of advances from rio to johannesburg through multidimensional synthetic indexes

In the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), the bases for a world sustainable development were set. Ten years later it took place in Johannesburg the World Summit on Sustainable Development, where it was discussed about the fulfilled advances and it favoured actions for century XXI. This document analyses the concern on sustainability in the Spanish regions by means of the creation of a global synthetic index of sustainable development that fulfils three conditions: it is adapted to Pressure-State-Answer principles, it adopts the Local Agenda 21 mandates and it fits in the four basic dimensions of sustainability: institutional, environmental, economic and social. Over the calculation of the changes taken place in the aforementioned decade in a set of selected variables – grouped in indicators and sub-indicators and classified according to the four dimensions aforementioned in the sustainable development – it is proceeded to the estimation of the synthetic index for the Spanish Autonomous Regions, what is useful as an instrument of analysis to make those regions hierarchical according to their degree of adaptation to the sustainability commitment developed in the Summit in Rio. JEL Classification: Q2, R1 Key Words: Sustainable development, regional analysis, Spain