environmental performance
New Zealand ranks first in the world in environmental performance, according to the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The other top-five nations in the 2006 EPI -- released in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 26 -- are Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, in that order. The top-ranked countries all commit significant resources and effort to environmental protection, resulting in strong performance across most of the policy categories.
The EPI identifies targets for environmental performance and measures how close each country comes to these goals. It ranks 133 countries on 16 indicators tracked in six policy categories: environmental health, air quality, water resources, biodiversity and habitat, productive natural resources and sustainable energy. The index's creators hope that, as a quantitative gauge of pollution control and natural resource management results, the index can be used to improve policymaking and shift environmental decision-making onto firmer analytic foundations.
The index provides "peer group" rankings for each country, showing how its performance stacks up against others facing similar environmental challenges. These benchmarks allow nations to be tracked on an issue-by-issue and aggregate basis.
The United States placed 28th in the rankings -- significantly below other highly-developed nations like the United Kingdom (5) and Canada (8). This score reflects top-tier performance on environmental health issues, but also indicates that the United States is under-performing on critical issues of renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and water resources, says Gustave Speth, dean of F&ES.
"The lagging performance of the United States on environmental issues -- particularly on energy and climate change -- signals trouble not only for the American people, but for the whole world," says Speth. "Perhaps this ranking will serve as a wake-up call to the American public and particularly to leaders in Washington."
The lowest-ranked countries -- Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger -- are underdeveloped nations with weak regulatory systems and with little capacity to invest in environmental infrastructure such as drinking water and sanitation systems.
The 2006 EPI generates a number of policy conclusions, says Daniel C. Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy. Wealth and a country's level of economic development emerge as a significant determinant of environmental outcomes, he notes. However, he points out, at every level of development, some countries achieve environmental results that far exceed their peers, demonstrating that policy choices also affect performance. For example, the Dominican Republic (54) significantly outperforms Haiti (114) even though the countries share an island. Similarly, Sweden (2) produces much better environmental results than Belgium (39).
The EPI reveals that sound policymaking is critical to successful pollution control and sound natural resource management, says Esty. "Policy choices matter. Good governance emerges as a critical driver of environmental performance."
Incomplete data excluded 60 countries from the 2006 EPI. "In spite of data gaps, methodological limitations, and serious scientific uncertainties," notes Marc Levy, associate director for science applications at the Columbia Center for International Earth Science Information Network, "the Environmental Performance Index demonstrates that environmental policy results can be tracked with the same outcome-oriented and performance-based rigor that applies to poverty reduction, education and health promotion."
The brochure for EPI and a full report is available at www.yale.edu/epi.
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