Environment Performance Index 2022

About EPI 2022

• Environment Performance Index is a biennial index, which ranks the country based on their environmental performance and sustainability of a country. It was started in 2022 as Environmental Sustainability Index by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with the Yale Center for Environment Law and Policy and the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network with support of the McCall MacBain Foundation.

Framework for ranking Countries:

• EPI uses 40 performance indicators across 11 issue categories. These indicators measure how close countries are to meeting internationally established sustainability targets for specific environmental issues. These issue categories are in turn aggregated into 3 policy objectives: Environmental Health, Ecosystem Vitality, and Climate Change. To make the EPI metrics broadly accessible, the EPI team transforms the raw environmental data into indicators that place countries on a 0–100 scale from worst to best performance. On the basis of this EPI measures 180 countries.
• Analysis of the EPI data demonstrates that financial resources, good governance, human development, and regulatory quality matter for elevating a country’s sustainability. Highlighting these connections, the EPI helps to promote sustainable development in support of a more environmentally secure and equitable future.
• All the three objectives are further divided and scored according to sub objectives:
• Climate Change:
• Climate Change Mitigation: Global progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is deeply insufficient to meet the net-zero targets by midcentury, as established in the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact. Although the EPI’s trends-based indicators show that greenhouse gas emissions are not rising as quickly as they were 10 years ago, the world scores extremely poorly on the projected greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 indicator.
• Environmental Health:
• Air Quality: Poor air quality is one of the most serious global public health issues, resulting in over 6 million premature deaths each year (Health Effects Institute, 2020). Over 99% of the global population still breathes unsafe air (World Health Organization, 2022). Many of the countries with low scores in the overall EPI also place near the bottom of the Air Quality issue category, including India and Pakistan. Urbanization and industrialization in these and other countries continue to emit dangerous levels of air pollutants, presenting a challenge to policymakers as they aim to develop sustainability.
• Sanitation and Drinking Water: Over 2 billion people nearly 25% of the world’s population currently drink unsafe water, and nearly 3.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation services like sewage treatment. Without clean water, morbidity and mortality remain high in many regions of the globe, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.
• Heavy Metals: Heavy metal exposure contributes to poor health outcomes in many regions, although concerted efforts to phase out lead use in fuel, paints, and plumbing has successfully reduced global morbidity and mortality.
• Waste Management: It imposes a significant burden on ecosystems and threatens to undermine public health. Few other issue categories show as stark a divide in performance between developed and developing countries as Waste Management. The world has made very little progress in increasing recycling rates, and gains toward mitigating ocean plastic pollution have been reversed by rising single-use plastic consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Ecosystem Vitality:
• Biodiversity and Habitat: Countries have now conserved 10% of the world’s coastline and marine areas, exceeding the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 earlier this decade. However, the world failed to meet the companion target of preserving 17% of terrestrial areas by 2020, despite adding 22 million square kilometers of protections roughly equivalent to the size of Russia.
• Ecosystem Services: Pervasive tree cover loss results in poor global performance in the Ecosystem Services issue category. Expanding agricultural land, forest fires, and natural resource consumption drive forest destruction throughout the world.
• Fisheries: The health of global fisheries remains poor. Nearly 75% of catch comes from stocks that are collapsed or exploited, threatening to undermine an important nutritional source for many countries in the developing world.
• Acid Rain: Ecosystems in many parts of the developed world are slowly recovering from the acidification of prior decades, yet other regions must make greater effort to reduce emissions of acid rain precursors. The high global scores in sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions growth rates masks uneven global progress.
• Agriculture: Pesticide and fertilizer application to farmland can increase crop yields and reduce pest infestations, but current use patterns undermine ecosystem health by polluting soil and water with chemical residues
• Water Resources: Pesticide and fertilizer application to farmland can increase crop yields and reduce pest infestations, but current use patterns undermine ecosystem health by polluting soil and water with chemical residues

India’s position in EPI 2022

• India ranked last i.e. 180 in Environmental Policy Index 2022 whose score is 18.9. India’s rank is lower than Myanmar (19.4), Viet Nam (20.1), Bangladesh (23.1), and Pakistan (24.6). The top performers are Denmark with a score of 77.9, followed by United Kingdom (77.7) and Fnland (76.5).
• India was ranked 168 in EPI 2020.
• Reasons why India has rejected the report:
• Some of the indicators used for assessing performance are extrapolated and based on surmises and unscientific methods.
• The weight of indicators in which India was performing well was reduced, and the reasons for change in assignment of weightage have not been explained.
• There is no specific rationale that has been adopted for selection of weights. It seems it is based on publishing agency’s choice, which is not suitable for a global index.
• No indicator talks about renewable energy, energy efficiency and process optimisation. The selection of indicators is biased and incomplete
• This report is based on unfounded assumptions.

Questions: 

Q.1 What rank India has received in Environment Performance Index 2022?
a. 180th
b. 145th
c. 175th
d. 124th

Q.2 Which country topped in Environment Performance Index 2022?
a. United Kingdom
b. Saudi Arabia
c. Denmark
d. Australia