Escada da sustentabilidade: uma proposta metodológica com aplicação no Estado do Ceará

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the situation presented by the State of Ceara and its 184 municipalities in terms of sustainable development, using the Sustainability Ladder index (SL). The SL is constituted by several stages. These steps range from consultation to specialists in order to define the indicators of sustainable develop-ment, to the graphic representation of the results. The classes that make up the index are critical, alert, moderate, acceptable and ideal. The results showed that the environmental dimension presents the best results among the cities, while the worst performance was with the economic dimension. With regard to the general performance of the cities in SL, no city in the said state is in the best classification (ideal), while more than 50% of the places are inserted at the “critical” level.