Green report: India in bottom 6; biodiversity, air quality big worries

Yale University in partnership with Columbia University has been publishing an Environmental Performance Index (EPI) report every two years since 2006. It released the 2024 EPI report recently.

The report uses 58 performance indicators across 11 environmental issues and scores 180 countries to assess their progress toward mitigating climate change, improving environmental health and protecting ecosystem vitality.

Climate change indicator tracks the progress made by countries in realising the climate mitigation targets. Ecosystem vitality assesses the sustainability of natural resource use and the conservation of natural ecosystems while environmental health measures the impact of environmental pollution on human well-being.

To allow comparisons between countries that vary in size, economy and population, the authors standardise the data by converting them into proportions, rates and per capita units.

After standardising data, the report rescales the data into a 0 to 100 score. This puts all indicators on a common, easy-to-interpret scale, facilitating comparisons and aggregation into a composite index. The EPI uses the distance-to-target approach for indicator scoring. Countries’ scores reflect how close they are to targets of best and worst performance

In viewing the report’s findings, one may note their limitations such as a lack of reliable and continuous data for some variables for some countries and the justification for assigning weights to different indicators to derive the composite EPI. Notwithstanding this, the report gives a broad overview of the state of the environment across countries.

The report reveals that in terms of overall global environmental performance, most countries in the West occupied the top ranks, with their EPI scores ranging from 55 to 75. Estonia, Luxembourg, Germany, Finland and the UK occupied the first five ranks among 180 countries, with EPI scores between 72 and 75.

Sadly, India had the dubious distinction of figuring among the bottom six countries along with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Pakistan and Vietnam, with EPI scores ranging from 24 to 28. Many African countries such as Gabon, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with EPI scores of between 49 and 53, fared better than India.

European countries fared well and occupied the top ranks (with EPI scores from 59 to 83) in realising the climate mitigation targets. China and India, which rely heavily on fossil fuel-driven economic growth, were ranked at 107 and 133, with EPI scores of 39.8 and 35, respectively.

The EPI score for the US, historically the greatest polluter, ranked 42 among 180 countries with an EPI score of 50. The bottom ranks were reported by some African and Asian countries. Cutting emissions at the pace needed will require significant and ongoing investments in renewable energy, transforming food systems, electrifying buildings and transportation and redesigning cities.

After climate change, biodiversity loss has emerged as the most serious and irreversible environmental crisis. For biodiversity and habitats, the report assessed variables such as protection of key marine and terrestrial biodiversity areas, species protection index, protected area effectiveness, extent of croplands and buildings in protected areas and bio-climatic ecosystems resilience index. 

Botswana led all countries with the highest EPI score of 85.8 in respect of biodiversity and habitat protection. Other African and European countries such as Zambia, Germany, Norway, Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo, too, fared well. India, China and Micronesia occupied the last three ranks, which reflects poorly on their state of biodiversity protection.

The report points to overfishing in marine protected areas in Europe while many protected areas in the global south, including India, report widespread encroachments in the form of agriculture and buildings. The report underscores the necessity of providing protected areas with adequate funding and of developing stricter regulations in partnership with local communities.

For forests, the report considered variables such as the extent of loss of humid tropical primary forests, intact forest landscapes, lasting tree loss, net tree cover change and forest landscape integrity index.

Interestingly, Bhutan led all other countries in the world in this category, with the highest EPI score of 86.7. Nepal, India and China ranked 8, 15, and 16 respectively, with EPI scores between 73 to 81. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South America with large forest areas reported low EPI scores due to high deforestation rates.

Although Forest Survey of India data suggests that the forest cover has increased in India, this is mainly accounted for by plantation forestry, which has low biodiversity and ecological value.

As far as ecosystem vitality indicator is concerned, analysis shows that European countries occupied the first 20 ranks, with their EPI scores ranging from 68 to 84. India ranked 170 among 180 countries in terms of ecosystem vitality EPI score, sharing this dubious honour with other south Asian and Sub-Saharan countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Madagascar.

The environmental health indicator shows countries of the global north occupying the top ranks, with EPI scores of 70 to 89, whereas south Asian and Sub-Saharan countries occupied the bottom ranks.

India ranked 177 out of 180 countries in terms of the EPI score for environmental health. The World Air Quality Report 2023 reveals India to be the third most polluted country in the world, with three Indian cities — Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai — ranking among the 50 most polluted cities in the world.

With respect to sanitation and drinking water, where the extent of unsafe drinking water and sanitation is assessed, most sub-Saharan countries rank at the bottom with EPI scores from 4 to 20. India ranked 143 among 180 countries with an EPI score of 25.6. It is laudable that Singapore occupies the first rank with an EPI score of 99.9.

India still has a long way to go to improve environmental quality and realise the global environmental targets.

(The writer is Lead Author, GEO-7, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi)