India’s Poor Ranking in Environmental Performance Index (EPI)

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is produced jointly by Yale University and Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. Policymakers, scholars, non-governmental organizations, and the media have relied upon the biennial release of the EPI for policy insights and tracking of trends in sustainability. The EPI turns the latest advances in environmental science with worldwide datasets to form into a powerful summary of the state of sustainability around the world. The EPI serves as a communication tool for translating complex ideas into simpler, more useful forms.

The single, 0–100 score for each country serves as a starting point for deeper discussions. Country scores on the EPI are translated into rankings. The EPI rankings are intended to inspire countries to engage in healthy competition, vying to rise to the top of their peer groups. Backcasting EPI scores from historic data allows countries to track their progress over time. In these ways, the EPI offers a number of insights that are useful for identifying best practices, informing policy agendas, and setting priorities in environmental governance.

Data analysis for the 2018 EPI was based on creating a composite index. The researchers began by gathering data on 24 individual metrics of environmental performance. These metrics were aggregated into a hierarchy beginning with ten issue categories: Air Quality, Water & Sanitation, Heavy Metals, Biodiversity & Habitat, Forests, Fisheries, Climate & Energy, Air Pollution, Water Resources, and Agriculture.

These issue categories were then aggregated into two policy objectives – Environmental Health and Ecosystem Vitality – and then finally the overall EPI. These metrics provide a gauge at a national scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals. The EPI thus offers a scorecard that highlights leaders and laggards in environmental performance, gives insight on best practices, and provides guidance for countries that aspire to be leaders in sustainability.

The 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 180 countries. The top five countries are:

1.   Switzerland

2.   France

3.   Denmark

4.   Malta

5.   Sweden

The bottom five countries are:

176. Nepal

177. India

178. Dem. Rep. Congo

179. Bangladesh

180. Burundi

Some of the other rankings of interest are:

27. US

70. Sri Lanka

120. China

169. Pakistan

In general, high scorers exhibit long-standing commitments to protecting public health, preserving natural resources, and decoupling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from economic activity. Switzerland leads the world based on strong performance across most issues, especially air quality and climate protection. India and Bangladesh come in near the bottom of the rankings.

Low scores on the EPI are indicative of the need for national sustainability efforts on a number of fronts, especially cleaning up air quality, protecting biodiversity, and reducing GHG emissions. Some of the laggards face broader challenges, such as civil unrest, but the low scores for others can be attributed to weak governance. The EPI draws attention to the issues on which policymakers must take further action.