‘How green is my nation?’ is no longer a subject of conjecture. A Yale-Columbia team of scholars has created a unique ‘green’ index – the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which measures a country’s success at meeting its stated environmental policy goals. Ranging from 100 (greenest) to 0 (least green), EPI scores are a nation’s ‘report-card’ and an objective measure of how environmentally inclined a nation is.
163 nations have been given EPI ranking on their performance across ten categories including: environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change. This methodology facilitates cross-country comparisons – indicating the world’s most and least green nations, as well as analysis of how the global community is doing collectively on each particular policy issue.
In the third edition of the EPI, which has been revisited biannually since 2006, the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) has given Iceland the highest ranking of 93.5, making it the ‘greenest’ nation in the world.
Iceland’s top-notch performance derives from its high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and reforestation. Other top performers include Switzerland (89.1), Costa Rica (86.4), Sweden (86.0), and Norway (81.1) – all of which have made substantial investments in environmental infrastructure, pollution control, and policies designed to move toward long-term sustainability.
Germany with a score of 73.2 deserves special mention. It outperforms its European peers and does better than many other rich nations in regulating pesticides and managing agricultural use of water. It also excels at controlling carbon emissions and maintaining high water quality and low levels of soot in its cities. Germany has managed its resources well, adopting good practices such as recycling and investing in alternative energy.
France, too, ranks very highly—No. 10 overall and second in its income group —due largely to its long and careful devotion to nuclear power. Indeed, the generally high scores of nations that rely on nuclear energy, including many in Eastern Europe, is testimony to its value as a non-fossil-fuel source. By contrast, Belgium and the Netherlands, which share much in terms of population and geography with their neighbours, suffer from neglect of the environment—particularly in protecting native habitats.
The United States places 61st in the 2010 EPI, with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of local air pollution. This ranking puts the United States significantly behind other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom (14th), Germany (17th), and Japan (20th). Over 20 members of the European Union outrank the United States. Of the newly industrialized nations, China and India rank 121st and 123rd respectively – reflecting the strain rapid economic growth imposes on the environment.
The nations that find themselves in the middle of the income band tend to have the worst of both worlds, with mediocre scores on human health and poor scores on the kinds of measurements that would indicate heavy industry, such as poor air quality. India with a score of 48.3, for instance, is in many respects a poor country. Millions of its citizens lack adequate sanitation and clean drinking water, energy supply is spotty even in cities and the burning of biomass—wood and dung—is widespread, with deleterious effects on human health (lung disease) and the environment (soot and carbon emissions). On the other hand, rapid growth has brought air pollution and other ills, which will only get worse as citizens trade in scooters for automobiles.
Occupying the bottom five positions are Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone –impoverished countries that lack basic environmental amenities and policy capacity.
Analysis of the policy drivers underlying the 2010 rankings suggests that income is a major determinant of environmental success. At every level of development, however, some countries achieve results that exceed what would be anticipated, demonstrating that policy choices also affect performance. For example, Chile, where substantial investments in environmental protection have been made, ranks 16th, while its neighbour, Argentina, which has done much less to improve its pollution control and natural resource management, lags in 70th place. Regulatory rigor, the rule of law and good governance, and the absence of corruption also show strong correlations with high EPI scores.
Wealthy nations can afford cleaner technologies, such as good sanitation and catalytic converters on their cars, but development takes a toll on the environment. Less developed countries often lack both dirty industries and clean drinking water. Yet a theme throughout the study is how any nation, regardless of circumstance, can better itself through good governance. Green governance goes a long way in halting environmental degradation and greening nations.
