What is environmental performance index?

Switzerland is the number one in environmental performance while Iraq is number last in the category. Latvia, Norway, Luxembourg, Costa Rica, France, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom and Sweden are among the top countries of the word which stand on the top in taking care of their domestic environment through policy making and efficient implementation of the green laws.

According the EnvironmentPerformance Index 2012 (EPI) –it is released biannually by the Yale University – Tajikistan, Eritrea, Libyan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Kuwait, Yemen, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iraq are the worst performers in protection of their domestic environment because of the poor implementation mechanism of their environmental laws. The main cause of concern in the category of worst environmental performers is the presence of India that has huge potential to grow further in industrialization. It is a warning to the whole world if Indian industrial sector keeps on growing in same pace; it would be a major contributor in global warming and climate change in future.

Canada, South Korea, Denmark, Malaysia, Belgium and New Zealand are among strong performers. The main reasons of the better performance in the environmental sector by these countries are;

• Effective policy-making for environment protection
• Thorough legislation to protect the each sector of the environment
• Strong support network like rules and regulations to help implement green laws
• Fool-proof mechanism for the proper implementation of the environmental laws
• Efficient prosecution system against the environmental violators
• Huge public participation in environmental care along with the environmental watchdogs            

Environmental performance of a country is judged on the basis of its child mortality rate, presence of the amount of particulate matter in its ambient air, level of indoor air pollution, access of population to sanitation, access of people to drinking water, per capita emissions of sulfur dioxide and per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. It is assessed that what type of protective measures that country has adopted to improve its environmental conditions. Merely steps are not examined but the final ranking is done on the basis of the end-results of the protective measures taken for the environmental protection.

It is a candid reality that most of the least developed and backward countries have no any environmental data and their various levels of pollution are ascertained on random basis. This process is called random sampling. Therefore, it would be injustice to compare the environmental performance of the rich countries with that of the poor countries which don’t have any proper procedure to regularly record and update their environmental performance.

Its ample proof is that Pakistan has outperformed India in 2012 in environmental care according to this index. However, factual position is that Pakistan is far behind India in every aspect of the environmental protection including environmental legislation, policy making, implementation of green laws and public awareness. But green performance of both the countries is judged on the basis of various indicators which are quite alarming in India because of the growing urbanization, industrialization and population pressure. In Pakistan all environmental indicators are equally poor but not as much as that of India because it has low industrial base and its population pressure is also not as intense as that of India.

Experts believe that the environmental performance of all the countries cannot be gauged on the basis of same benchmarks. Therefore, their ranking cannot be compared for any reference because poor countries’ entire environmental data is recorded and updated on guesstimates. On the other hand rich countries have modern equipments and trained staff to monitor their environmental performance and develop the error-free green data.

Environmental performance index reflects that fact that how much a country has taken care of its environment through legislation and development