India Ends up at Bottom of the Environment Performance Index 2022

Image: The Indian Express

The Environment Performance Index 2022 by the World Bank ranks India at the lowest position with a total score of 18.9. It means that India is one of the countries in the world with the worst environmental health. The given score positions India even behind Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The country even scores lowest on various other measures, like rule of law, corruption control, and government effectiveness.

This EPI 2022 has been published by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University. For the EPI, the authorities used around 40 performance indicators in 11 categories. Based on those indicators, they judged countries on environmental health, climate change performance, and ecosystem vitality.

What is the Environment Performance Index?

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is a technique to numerically mark and quantify the environmental performance and the state of sustainability in different nations across the globe.

EPI ranks a total of 180 countries on their environmental health, climate change performance, and ecosystem vitality, using 40 performance indicators. These indicators offer a gauge at what level and scale the countries to their environmental policy targets. EPI provides a scorecard highlighting laggards and leaders in environmental performance. It also offers practical guidance for countries to motivate themselves to develop a sustainable future.

Significance of EPI

The overall EPI rankings are to appreciate the countries that are best addressing the national environmental challenges. It also offers a way for all the countries to spot issues, track trends, set targets, identify best policy practices, and understand the outcomes.

With fact and data-based analysis, government officials can come together to refine their policy agendas, maximise their return on environmental investments, and facilitate better communications with key stakeholders.

Besides that, EPI is also a power policy tool for supporting the efforts of all the countries to meet the targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. That’s how everyone from different parts of the world can move to build a society toward a sustainable and better future. The EPI 2022 is supporting the advanced climate policy discussions to meet net-zero emission targets by 2050.

India unhappy with the score

This new ranking for India is a big deterioration, as the country ranked 168th out of 180 countries in the EPI-2020. In case you are wondering who ranked first, Denmark got the first rank with a 27.6 score in the environmental health and sustainability categories.

Image: NDTV

According to the report, the countries that scored lowest this year need to invest in new policies on the environment. They must work on necessary building infrastructure that can offer them more environmental benefits, such as sanitation and clean drinking water. Furthermore, they need to work on decreasing ambient air pollution and controlling hazardous waste.

Why is India questioning EPI 2022?

No matter what’s the score of the Environment Performance Index 2022, the Indian Union Environment Ministry has rebutted its lowest ranking for India. According to the Indian authorities, some of the indicators used for EPI are extrapolated. Moreover, the indicators depended on unscientific and surmised methods.

According to the Indian central ministry, the index computes the ecosystems’ extent but not their productivity or condition. It also didn’t include indicators, such as soil health, agro biodiversity, food loss, and waste. All these indicators are vital for developing countries with extremely large populations. The ministry also mentioned that the weight of the indicators for India’s performance has been reduced. Moreover, the reasons for such a change are not explained well in the report.

Hence, India is not agreeing with the EPI 2022 score. After all, on World Environment Day 2022, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared how the country has achieved the 10 percent ethanol blending in petrol target ahead of 5 months. India also plans to get 40 percent of its electricity capacity from renewable energy sources by 2030.

However, we hope that the Indian government doesn’t get carried away with the rank. They must focus only on sustainable developmental pathways for a better and greener future.

Via: The Quint