Japan Ranks 14th in 2006 Environmental Performance Index

Japan was ranked 14th among 133 countries in the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) released on January 26, 2006 during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland.

The EPI was developed by the Center for Environmental Law & Policy at Yale University and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University to evaluate the environmental performance of each country based on 16 indicators. The top five countries were New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom. Germany was 22nd and the United States placed 28th.

The evaluation was conducted in six policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Quality, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources and Sustainable Energy. Each category consisted of several indicators; for example, the category of Environmental Health consisted of five indicators: Infant Mortality, Indoor Air Pollution, Drinking Water, Public Sanitation and Urban Air Pollution. Evaluation of overall performance was based on 16 indicators in all six policy categories.

As a whole, economic development and environmental performance were closely related, the report added that considerable gaps in performance were present among countries with similar levels of economic development, implying that policies greatly affect achievement. While admitting that the EPI still has scientific uncertainties due to its limitations in methodology and variations in data accuracy, the report stressed the EPI's effectiveness as an empirical foundation for policy analysis and a context for evaluating performance.

http://beta.sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/epi/
http://www.yale.edu/epi/

Posted: 2006/04/23 01:47:14 PM
Japanese version