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Environment is the foundation and support of human existence and survival and the guarantee of sustainable human development; environmental protection has undoubtedly become a common understanding and development strategy of all countries of the world. Now humankind is striving into the historical process of postindustrial society and is trying to reach rebalance with environment in later stage of development. All countries need to perform respective duties and obligations in environment governance, in joint efforts to plan economic development, social progresses and environment protection to realize mutual wins and sustainable development of the world and to create an Earth homeland for harmonious co-existence of humankind and environment.

Looking at environment, economy and social development, to promote sustainable development through global partnership must enhance environmental competitiveness to solve the global ecological environmental crisis. This is not only the premise and foundation to establish the argument of this research, but also where essential value and significance of this research lie in. Whether the sustainable development of human beings needs to enhance environmental competitiveness is an issue related to economic development, environmental protection and government function, and requires profound analysis and argumentation.

Environment and economy are two factors of a system. Between the two there is a kind of both opposition and unity dialectical relations. On the one hand, the environment and the economy are interdependent and closely linked entity. Environment is the basis and conditions for economic development, for any economic activity is under certain environment and resource conditions, environmental pros and cons will play a direct or indirect role in promoting or inhibiting economic development. And economic development, in turn, can provide guarantee funds and technical support for environmental protection and improvement to promote the virtuous cycle of economy and environment. On the other hand, the environment and the economy the environment and the economy are opposite and mutually exclusive to each other. Human has to continue to develop and utilize natural resources in the process of production and living which is bound to have an impact on the environment. Especially after the industrial revolution, with the rapid development of global industrial production and a surge in resource utilization, environment pollution is worsening, which has brought a huge threat to human survival and development, but also limits the further development of the economy.

In order to objectively evaluate the level of GEC and understand all the aspects and internal mechanism of GEC, a comprehensive evaluation of it is necessary, which requires establishment of an indicator system that can objectively and precisely reflect the various aspects of GEC while at the same time looking at the internal structural characteristics of it and can evaluate and analyze it using scientific and logical mathematical evaluation model. Owing to the extensive contents covered by GEC, including ecological environment, resource environment, environmental management, environmental influence and environmental coordination, and the unique internal structural characteristics, it is a rather complex task to establish an indicator system and mathematical model used for evaluation, analysis and research of the GEC. This study has explored to design a scientific and proactive evaluation indicator system and model with reasonable logics and wide visual field and at the same time fitting into the reality of global environment based on the environmental status and facts of 133 countries of the world and their environmental development objectives.

GEC research is a whole new area; there is neither mature research model or methodology, nor existing research contents for reference. Therefore, such researches need to first summarize the related previous researches and then extend the research with more contents and innovation in methodology. GEC is a cross-discipline research involving multiple areas of environmental economics, biology, economics and sociology, which are intricately interrelated; at the same time, we need to rationally define and objectively evaluate GEC, and make innovations in methodology. In this way, we can thoroughly explore the inherent essence of GEC and reveal the laws of GEC evolution. For such a complicated research subject, it requires clear organization and correct research approach, strictly following the designed technical roadmap (See Fig. 5.1) to ensure satisfaction of research standards and quality.

What the tide of globalization brings is unprecedented impact on humankind by global environmental problems and these problems have become the economic, political and cultural problems that restrict human existence and development. It can be said that the humankind is entering the era when the competition begins to focus on environment. This book for the first time introduces Global Environment Competitiveness (GEC) as a new way of weighing competitiveness and demonstrates a nation’s environment competitiveness through five elements, ecological environment, resource environment, environment carrying, environmental management and environment harmony, in the hope of providing reference for all countries to do complete and scientific analysis on environmental situation and to propose environmental development strategy. This part selects 133 countries of the world (See Fig. 6.1) as samples to analyze the distribution and rankings of global and regional environment competitiveness in 2012 so that the development changes, influencing factors and future trends of global competitiveness can be revealed, which will provide helpful reference for realization of sustainable development around the globe.

The GEC scores and rankings of the countries obtained through non-dimensional processing with threshold method and weighted summing only reflect the status of environmental competitiveness of single country. To reflect the physical variance and overall status of the GEC in each country, GEC scores and its distribution as well as the physical difference and balance among the scores need in-depth study and analysis. Figure 7.1 shows the evaluation scores of GEC in 2012 and distribution of such scores.

According to the evaluation indicator system and the mathematic model of REC, the evaluation and analysis are made on REC in 2012. Table 8.1 lists the rankings and scores of REC and the subordinate indicators in 2012 and Fig. 8.1 displays the REC scores of the six continents as well as the top three countries of each continent in 2012.

According to the evaluation indicator system and the mathematic model of EEC, the evaluation and analysis are made on EEC in 2012. Table 9.1 lists the rankings and scores of EEC in 2012 and Fig. 9.1 displays the EEC scores of the six continents as well as the top three countries of each continent in 2012.

According to the evaluation indicator system and the mathematic model of ECC, the evaluation and analysis are made on ECC in 2012. Table lists the rankings and scores of ECC in 2012 and Fig. displays the ECC scores of the six continents as well as the top three countries of each continent in 2012.