2016 Yale University Environmental Performance Index
The Yale University Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks countries' performance on high-priority environmental issues in two areas: protection of human health and protection of ecosystems.
The following are key findings from the 2016 Index.
1) The world is making progress addressing some
environmental issues while others have worsened considerably. A "global
scorecard' (Figure 1) illustrates this progress and deterioration,
showing promising trends in Health Impacts, Access to Drinking Water,
and Access to Sanitation. Air Quality (NO
2) and Fisheries,
however, exhibit troubling declines. Comparing relative performance
across issues, the world performs poorly on Wastewater Treatment and Air
Quality (PM
2.5) as well as in Carbon Intensity Trend
indicators. Trends suggest improvement in many areas, yet progress
remains slow, and some trends are overshadowed by other, more troubling
findings. The world's nations protect more marine habitat than ever, for
instance, yet fish stocks are declining. Performance among areas is
linked and trends sometimes conflict, exhibiting the complexity of
global environmental measurement.
2) Economic development leads to improvement in some
environmental areas, yet development is also associated with increased
prevalence of environmental hazards. Air and Water indicators clearly
exhibit these conflicting signals. As nations have become wealthier,
particularly in Asia, their governments invest in sanitation
infrastructure and fewer people are exposed to unsafe water, leading to
fewer deaths from waterborne illnesses. But as countries develop,
increased industrial production, shipping, and automotive transportation
foul the air, exposing human populations to dangerous airborne
compounds. Thus, deaths attributed to air pollution have risen steadily
in the past decade in step with exposure.
Air pollution is a growing global problem; worse in rapidly
developing economies, like China and India, than in wealthy or very poor
nations. Yet dangerous air pollution is not confined to any one country
or group of countries – it is a global issue. More than 3.5 billion
people, or half of the world's population, live in nations where average
exposure to fine particulate matter exceeds levels the World Health
Organization (WHO) considers safe (10 micrograms/m3). One-third (1.3
billion) of these people live in the East Asia and Pacific region, where
in China and South Korea more than 50 percent of their populations are
exposed to unsafe levels of fine particulate matter. In India and Nepal,
the percentage is nearly 75 percent. In contrast, drinking water
metrics have improved steadily, The number of people lacking access to
clean water has been cut nearly in half from 960 million in the year
2000 to 550 million, or around 8 percent of the world's population,
today.
3) When measurement is poor or not aligned with
proper management, environmental and human health suffer. EPI shows that
sectors with weak measurement are also areas exhibiting decline. Marine
fisheries are poorly monitored, for instance, as many fleets misreport
or fail to report catch data, and international policy targets are ad
hoc and incomplete. It is no surprise that fish stocks around the world
are in stark decline. The 2016 EPI, in collaboration with Sea Around Us –
a fisheries research initiative based at the University of British
Columbia – takes into account the quality of fisheries data by
penalizing countries whose data are incomplete or unreliable.
4) Developing policy relevant indicators based in
science is essential to appropriate measurement and management.
Indicators and policy targets are too often framed by political aims
rather than science. Two new EPI indicators – Species Protection and
Drinking Water Quality – show how policy targets are frequently defined
according to political expediency. The 2016 EPI Species Protection
indicator, which relies on the Map of Life – a global database of
species – measures the gap between terrestrial protected areas and
actual species habitats. This gap (Figure 4) suggests that nationally
designated protected areas do not always align with species
preservation. Protected areas are often established on marginal lands,
rather than in high-value areas where wildlife is forced out by
agricultural development and human settlements.
Millennium Development Goal-7 includes an indicator that assesses
Access to Drinking Water, yet this MDG metric is not optimally suited to
its goal, which is for countries to increase access to "safe drinking
water." The indicator used to measure the goal's progress is framed in
terms of access to "improved" or "unimproved" sources, as determined by a
piped (as opposed to open) water source. This metric does not say
whether the water from improved sources is actually treated and safe to
drink. Data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) –
a research organization that produces the Global Burden of Disease, a
measure of death attributable to certain risk factors – reveals a
radically different picture of unsafe water quality exposure than the
one that MDG-7's indicators paint (Figure 5). In many countries and
regions, a significant portion of 'improved' drinking water sources are
untreated. These results show policy targets that are politically
expedient – it is easier, after all, to measure access to "improved" and
"unimproved" water than to measure water quality – but not wholly
relevant to science or human health.
5) The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement specifies
climate change action expected from all countries, yet solid metrics to
evaluate performance remain elusive. Measuring climate change
performance – that is, assessing which countries are implementing
policies that result in measurable climate mitigation – is one of the
most urgent challenges facing society today. The inextricable linkage
between carbon and economic growth makes disentangling performance
signals from emissions difficult. As a result, the 2016 EPI's Climate
and Energy indicators primarily signal how countries are decarbonizing
economic growth rather than whether their climate policies are having a
tangible effect. These indicators cannot point to underlying drivers of
decarbonization, whether they are due to economic decline or through
concerted policy effort. Denmark, for instance, has made strong
commitments to reduce emissions through increasing efficiency and
renewable energy production. Singapore, as a result of its high urban
density, has been able to lower its carbon intensity relative to
economic peers over the last decade. Other countries, such as Russia,
are likely overachieving compared to economic peers due to recession
rather than ambitious climate efforts.
Other Conclusions
1) Data from new sources including from cutting-edge
technologies help improve global monitoring of progress towards
international goals, such as the SDGs, yet these innovations do not
represent a policy silver bullet. The EPI uses advances in satellite
technology and remote sensing, which contribute to globally comparable
datasets where national governments fail to monitor or report
environmental data. Satellite data is used to generate air quality and
forestry metrics that are more readily comparable and comprehensive than
what has emerged from previous models and national reports. These new
data sources, however, are not perfect. Satellite-derived tree cover
data, for instance, uses a global definition of forest cover that counts
plantations and natural forest equally. Because satellites have set
orbits and a limited time series, forests with slower growth and
regeneration cycles may be incorrectly registered as "loss" depending on
the duration of measurement. Long-term, three-year rolling averages of
air quality data also result in lower exposure values than data produced
by ground-based monitors.
2) Sub-national indicators often illustrate more
accurate and actionable data than national level metrics. Environmental
issues are rarely confined to national borders. And many environmental
issues, when measured at the national level, lose local relevance. How
can a single measure of air or water quality define an entire country,
particularly when it is as large and diverse as the United States or
Russia? The EPI's selection of the nation-state as the unit of measure
is not always the best level of analysis for a particular environmental
concern. In the case of Nitrogen Balance, for example, a country can
exhibit areas of both excess nitrogen and nitrogen deficiency, due to
soil and climatic differences. A national measure of Nitrogen Balance
obscures these nuances.
3) Better environmental measurement and indicator
systems are needed. Every EPI underscores this conclusion. While there
has been progress in some areas of measurement, particularly with
technological advances and innovations like satellite data, many
environmental concerns lack comparable data to monitor extent or
progress. Freshwater quality, species loss, climate adaptation, and
waste management are some issues that remain absent from the EPI's
evaluation because of insufficient data. Without this information,
environmental management will suffer and natural systems and human
health will decline. As the EPI shows, progress occurs only when
measurement and management align.
Links
The survey, which benchmarks nations according to their economic peers, follows a recent report showing investor confidence in Australia's large-scale renewable energy industry had evaporated because of uncertainty in the sector.