in environmental sustainability
Finland leads the world in environmental sustainability, according to a 142-nation study released Feb. 4 at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), held this year in New York.
The study ranks the United States 51st, showing that a nation's economic status does not always correspond to its Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) performance. The United Arab Emirates ranked last. These results emerge from the most recent update of the ESI, a project conducted jointly by Yale, Columbia University and the WEF.
In addition to the ESI, a pilot Environmental Performance Index (EPI) will also be unveiled. While the ESI takes account of environmental "endowments" -- that is, current results as well as future capacity to manage environmental challenges -- the EPI measures current performance on core environmental issues such as air and water pollution, land protection and greenhouse emissions.
"The ESI permits systematic cross-national environmental comparisons," says Daniel Esty, director of Yale's Center for Environmental Law and Policy and ESI project director.
"Environmental decision making has long been plagued by uncertainties and a lack of critical information," adds Esty, who is also associate dean at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and director of Yale's World Fellows Program. "As a result, choices are made on the basis of generalized observations and best guesses, or worse yet, rhetoric or emotion. The ESI moves us toward a more analytically rigorous and data driven approach to environmental decision making."
According to the study, Finland ranks at the top because of its success in minimizing air and water pollution, its high institutional capacity to handle environmental problems and its comparatively low levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
The United States performance is rated as uneven. The study shows the nation lags in controlling greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change and under-performs its peers in reducing waste. Yet the United States stands at the forefront of the world in controlling water pollution and promoting robust environmental policy debates.
The study's findings were based on calculations of 20 key indicators in five categories: environmental systems, environmental stresses, human vulnerability to environmental risks, a society's institutional capacity to respond to environmental threats and a nation's stewardship of the shared resources of the global commons.
Just as the Gross Domest Product (GDP) rating provides a broad-gauge indicator of economic success, the ESI distills a country's capacity for sustained environmental strength into a single number ranging from 0 to 100. Much like a cumulative grade point average for the environment, this number provides a comprehensive snapshot of a country's likely environmental quality of life over the next generation or two.
Among the 20 indicators that comprise the ESI are factors such as urban air quality, water and the strength of environmental regulation. The study builds on 68 underlying databases, representing the most comprehensive publicly available collection of environmental indicators in existence. Creating accessible, interdisciplinary databases for earth science research is a specialty of Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a unit of the Columbia Earth Institute.
The ESI provides a basis for addressing a number of pressing policy questions, such as "Does good environmental performance come at a price in terms of economic success?"
"The ESI shows that a nation's economic status does not necessarily predict its environmental success," says Marc Levy of CIESIN.
Finland and Belgium, for example, have similar GDP per capita, but are ranked widely apart by the ESI. Finland has a $22,008 GDP per capita and a 73.7 score, while Belgium has a GDP of $24,533 per capita and scores 38.6.
"Comparative analysis allows us to understand where conditions are improving and where they are deteriorating, which policies are working and which are not, and where 'best practices' might be found," says Esty.
"No country is above average in each of the 20 indicators, nor is any country below average in all 20," notes Peter Cornelius of the WEF's Global Leaders for Tomorrow Environment Task Force. "Every country has room for improvement. No country can be said to be on a truly sustainable environmental path."
As Columbia's Levy explains, "the ESI combines measures of current conditions, pressures on those conditions, human impacts and social responses, because these factors collectively constitute the best way to gauge the prospects for long-term environmental sustainability."
To assist in measuring current environmental performance, a parallel Environmental Performance Index (EPI) was created. The EPI ranks countries according to their present air and water quality, land protection, and climate change prevention results.
"The EPI allows us to zero in precisely on efforts to manage environmental problems," says Kim Samuel-Johnson, director of the WEF Global Leaders for Tomorrow Environment Task Force. "This index measures things for which a government can clearly be held accountable. It shows how business-like emphasis on performance measurement can improve environmental results."
Next month Oxford University Press will publish "Environmental Performance Measurement: The Global Report 2001-2002," edited by Esty and Cornelius with a chapter contributed by Levy. This volume builds on the first ESI, issued in 2001, and provides a collection of essays that make the case for data-driven environmental decision making. The book demonstrates how a more quantitative approach to environmental analysis is driving thinking in the business world, the capital markets and, increasingly, in the policy domain.
In praising the volume, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, former executive director of the U.N. Environmental Program, observed, "Making good environmental decisions is always challenging. Without good data and information, it is impossible. 'Environmental Performance Measurement' shows how comparative data can be used to drive the policy process with potentially significant results."
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