TODAY’S STUDY: CLEARING THE AIR ABOUT THE AIR

EPI 2012; Environmental Performance Index and Pilot Trend Environmental Performance Index
January 2012 (Yale University Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network)

Executive Summary

Twenty years after the landmark Rio Earth Summit, governments still struggle to demonstrate improved environmental performance through quantitative metrics across a range of pollution control and natural resource management challenges. With budgetary constraints an issue around the world, governments face increasing pressure to show tangible results from their environmental investments.

The 2000 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), the predecessor to the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), first responded to the growing need for rigorous, data driven environmental performance measurement. The 2012 EPI, the seventh iteration of this environmental measurement project, adds to the foundation of empirical support for sound policymaking and breaks further ground, establishing for the first time a basis for tracking changes in performance over time. The EPI and the Pilot Trend Environmental Performance Index (Trend EPI) rank countries on 22 performance indicators spanning ten policy categories reflecting facets of both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. The methodology facilitates country comparisons and provides a way to assess the global community’s performance over time with respect to established environmental policy goals.

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Environmental Performance Index Framework: About the Index

The 2012 EPI ranks 132 countries on 22 performance indicators in the following ten policy categories:

• Environmental Burden of Disease
• Water (effects on human health)
• Air Pollution (effects on human health)
• Air Pollution (ecosystem effects)
• Water Resources (ecosystem effects)
• Biodiversity and Habitat
• Forestry
• Fisheries
• Agriculture
• Climate Change

These policy categories track performance and progress on two broad policy objectives: Environmental Health and Ecosystem Vitality. Each indicator has an associated environmental public health or ecosystem sustainability target. The full report, including a complete description of the performance indicators, underlying data sets, and methodology is available on the web at www.epi.yale.edu.

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Results and Policy Implications of the 2012 EPI and Trend EPI

We believe that a number of interesting conclusions can be drawn from the results of the 2012 EPI, the Trend EPI, and the underlying indicators:

äThe latest EPI rankings reveal a wide range of environmental sustainability results. Many countries are making progress on at least some of the challenges they face. At the indicator level, our analysis suggests that some issues are being successfully addressed at a worldwide scale, although performance on some other challenges, notably climate change, has declined globally.

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äWealth matters. The Environmental Health scores, in particular, reveal a significant relationship with GDP per capita. EPI scores more generally also correlate with wealth, although there is a diversity of performance within every level of economic development.

äThe pattern of results make clear that environmental challenges come in several forms and vary with country-specific circumstances as well as the level of development. Some issues arise from the resource and pollution impacts of industrialization, such as air pollution and rising levels of waste. These impacts largely affect developed countries. Other challenges are commonly associated with poverty and underinvestment in basic environmental amenities, such as access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. These problems primarily affect developing nations.

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äA number of countries that lag on the overall EPI have impressive results on the Trend EPI. For countries that have been at the high and of the EPI ranking over the last decade, the trend results are less meaningful. We note that the overall EPI and Trend EPI rankings by themselves should be understood only as indicative. More insight will often be obtained by looking at the individual indicator level and policy category results.

äThe Trend EPI reveals improvements for many countries on a significant number of issues. In the Environmental Health objective, global trends show decreasing child mortality as well as increasing access to sanitation and drinking water. However, persistent challenges remain in the Ecosystem Vitality objective. In particular, with respect to climate change, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise globally with few countries on a sustainable emissions trajectory.

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äA comparison of the 2012 EPI and Trend EPI exposes persistent gaps in environmental governance and management over time. In general, countries show gains on the Environmental Health objective across all levels of performance measured by the EPI. With regard to Ecosystem Vitality, however, the results are much more varied. Some countries are making gains, but many are not. And a worrisome number of countries are both low-ranked and declining.

äThe 2012 EPI highlights an array of challenges constraining movement toward data-driven and analytically rigorous environmental policymaking. These issues include unreliable data sources, gaps in data coverage, limited time series metrics, persistent methodological weaknesses, and the lack of a systematic process for verifying the environmental data reported by governments. The more rigorous data standards used in the 2012 EPI resulted in the replacement or omission of some indicators used in previous indices. We are particularly distressed by the lack of global, accurate, and comparative data on waste management, recycling, toxic exposures, and several other critical policy concerns. Likewise, the low quality and limited availability of comparative data for issues such as agricultural sustainability and water quality as well as quantity is disappointing. Simply put, the world needs better data collection and monitoring, more consistent reporting and analysis, and mechanisms for independent data verification.