With recent stimulus plans providing incentive to shift towards a greener economy and with many nations establishing eco-friendly goals for the future, the race is on to become the world’s greenest nation.
To actually compare and rank so many varied and intricate ‘entities’ seems an impossible feat. But researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities have done just that. They’ve recently released their latest Environmental Performance Index which attempts to rank, in a fair manner, 163 different countries based on 25 performance indicators within ten policy categories spanning environmental public health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change.
2010 EPI Results
Released every two years, the 2010 Environmental Performance Index ranks Iceland as the overall winner. Iceland’s top-notch performance is credited in large part to its high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and reforestation. The country gets most of its power from renewable sources such as hydropower and geothermal energy.
Switzerland came in second, with Costa Rica in third place. Not surprisingly, Sweden and Norway came in fourth and fifth respectively. All were recognized for having made large investments for improvement in environmental infrastructure, pollution control, and long-term sustainability policies. For example, Costa Rica has made significant efforts to preserve its rain forest.
The United States placed 61st in the 2010 EPI, while Canada came in at 46th, far behind other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom in 14th place, and Germany and Japan at 17th and 20th place respectively.
Green with envy? That’s not the intent of the rankings.
EPI Benefits
EPI rankings aim to provide a gauge at a national government level to measure how closely countries are following established environmental policy goals as well as an overall view of how the global community is doing collectively in regards to each particular policy issue.
The Environmental Performance Index does offer some important insights. It highlights the need for richer nations to help impoverished ones, such as Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone, who placed in the last five spots, lacking basic environmental amenities and policy capacity.
The rankings also reveal the heavy toll rapid industrialization has on environmental health, with China and India ranking 121st and 123rd respectively.
Let the Viewer Beware
One caveat, or maybe a few, is in order. The index does not take into account certain influencing factors, such as the impact a recession or economic downturn can have on environmental ratings. Is a nation really interested in going green, or has it been forced to shut down pollution-producing industries due to hard economic times? Iceland itself suffered one of Europe’s worst economic crises, which could have factored into their environmental rating.
As well, the overall scores do not decipher which areas a country excels in, or which it lags behind in. For example, Denmark is a confirmed leader in areas of alternative energy such as wind power, and yet scored surprisingly at 32nd place. There is a need to look beneath the surface to see what factors are pulling down a strong overall score, and what areas need improvement.
Finally, while having data to qualify and track environmental performance is essential to fighting climate change, there still exists discord on how to measure and score such information. There is also a lack of reliable environmental data. Jay Emerson, professor of statistics at Yale and one of the leaders of the 2010 EPI project stated: “The conclusions that emerge are only as good as the underlying data. We are firmly committed to further improvements in data quality.”
With serious gaps in data, and with countries independently submitting data without external verification, a somewhat inaccurate analysis is unavoidable. However, one trend emerges: regulatory rigor, good governance, and the absence of corruption correlate with high EPI scores. In short, a lack of greed and fair and earnest leadership should catapult any country to the top of the green world.
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Would be good if all country’s gave more effort in making the world greener. I saw in this documentary that the world is intaking to much carbon dioxide, and annualy it increases which causes, heat, climate change and it would be devastating. I wish that everyone is aware of the world and how its changing and start helping make it a better place so the next generation can live and experience a better life as life goes on.. and the main point of living is for fun and helping others, by helping other u must make sure they can life from the problems like global warming, air pollution and all that..
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