Environmental Performance Index 2022

Context:

India has reacted to the EPI, 2022, a report that ranks India last (along with Nigeria) among 180 countries in terms of managing climate change, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality.

• The Environment Ministry of India has claimed that some of the indicators that were used for the index are ‘extrapolated and based on the surmises and unscientific methods’.

Relevance:

GS III- Environment and Ecology

Dimensions of the Article:

1. About Environmental Performance Index 2022
2. Environmental Performance Index 2022: India’s score

About Environmental Performance Index 2022

• It is recently published by the Yale Center for Environment Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth science Information Network, Columbia University. 
• The report has ranked the 180 countries in Environmental Performance Index 2022 on 40 performance indicators across the 11 issue categories on environmental health, climate change performance, and ecosystem vitality.
• The analysis of the environmental performance by the 180 countries for the Environmental Performance Index 2022 is being done by the researchers at the Earth Institute of Yale and Columbia University.
• As per the report, the countries are scored and ranked in the Environmental performance Index 2022 on the basis of the environmental performance with the use of the most recent year’s data available.
• The scores are calculated to observe how they have changed over the previous years.

Top 5 Countries:

1. Denmark
2. United Kingdom
3. Finland
4. Malta
5. Sweden

Environmental Performance Index EPI 2022: India’s score

• In Environmental Performance Index 2022 India is ranked at 180 with a total score of 18.9 and in the last decade, the performance has gone down by 0.6 scores.
  • The country has scored the lowest among 180 countries in the index that evaluated the environmental performance of these countries.
• India’s neighboring nations have done better including Pakistan which is ranked at 176 and Bangladesh at 177
• The three primary categories under which the scores have been given are
  • Ecosystem vitality
  • Climate change performance
  • Environmental health
• India has score 19.3 on the ecosystem vitality on the index and the change in the area in the last decade in -2.
• The country has score 12.5 on health, meaning poor air quality, drinking water and sanitation.
• India’s waste management in terms of ocean plastics, solid wastes and recycling is also poor.

-Source: The Hindu