The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is a method of quantifying and numerically marking the environmental performance of a state's policies. This index was developed from the Pilot Environmental Performance Index, first published in 2002, and designed to supplement the environmental targets set forth in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.[1]
The EPI was preceded by the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), published between 1999 and 2005. Both indexes were developed by Yale University (Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy) and Columbia University (Center for International Earth Science Information Network) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The ESI was developed to evaluate environmental sustainability relative to the paths of other countries. Due to a shift in focus by the teams developing the ESI, the EPI uses outcome-oriented indicators, then working as a benchmark index that can be more easily used by policy makers, environmental scientists, advocates and the general public.[2]
As of January 2012 four EPI reports have been released - the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index,[3] and the 2008, 2010, and 2012 Environmental Performance Index.[4][5] For the 2012 report, a new "Pilot Trend EPI" was developed to rank countries based on the environmental performance changes occurred during the last decade, allowing to establish which countries are improving and which are declining.[6]
In the 2014 EPI ranking, the top five countries were Switzerland, Luxembourg, Australia, Singapore, and the Czech Republic. The bottom five countries in 2014 were Somalia, Mali, Haiti, Lesotho, and Afghanistan. The United Kingdom was ranked in 12th place, Japan 26th place, the United States 33rd, Brazil 77th, China 118th, and India came in 155th.[7] The top five countries based on their 2012 Pilot Trend EPI were Estonia, Kuwait, El Salvador, Namibia and Congo.[8]
| OBJECTIVE | |||
| POLICY CATEGORIES | |||
| INDICATORS | 1. Environmental Burden of Disease | 2. Adequate Sanitation | 4. Indoor Air Pollution |
| 3. Drinking Water | 5. Urban Particulates | ||
| 6. Local Ozone | |||
| OBJECTIVE | |||
| POLICY CATEGORIES | |||
| INDICATORS | 7. Regional Ozone | 9. Water Quality Index | 11. Conservation Risk Index |
| 8. Sulfur Dioxide Emissions | 10. Water Stress | 12. Effective Conservation | |
| 13. Critical Habitat Protection | |||
| 14. Marine Protected Areas | |||
| POLICY CATEGORIES | |||
| POLICY SUB-CATEGORY | |||
| INDICATORS | 15. Growing Stock | 16. Marine Trophic Index | 18. Irrigation Stress |
| 17. Trawling Intensity | 19. Agricultural Subsidies | ||
| 20. Intensive Cropland | |||
| 21. Burnt Land Area | |||
| 22. Pesticide Regulation | |||
| POLICY CATEGORIES | |||
| INDICATORS | 23. Emissions per capita | ||
| 24. Emissions per electricity generated | |||
| 25. Industrial carbon intensity |
The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is constructed through the calculation and aggregation of more than 20 indicators reflecting national-level environmental data. These indicators are combined into nine issue categories, each of which fit under one of two overarching objectives. This section provides an overview of how the EPI is calculated.
WHAT DOES THE EPI MEASURE?
Environmental Health and Ecosystem Vitality are the 2016 EPI’s two main objectives that provide an umbrella for the Index’s issue areas and indicators. Environmental Health measures the protection of human health from environmental harm. Ecosystem Vitality measures ecosystem protection and resource management. These two objectives are divided into nine issue categories that encompass high-priority environmental policy issues including Agriculture, Air Quality, Biodiversity and Habitat, Climate and Energy, Forests, Fisheries, Health Impacts, Water Resources, and Water and Sanitation. The issue categories are extensive but not comprehensive (see Boxes 2 & 4: Selection Criteria for Data in the EPI and Data Gaps and Deficiencies). Twenty indicators calculated from country-level data form the issue categories’ foundation. Figure 7 illustrates the 2016 EPI framework and the objectives, issue categories, and indicators.
Relevance: The indicator tracks the environmental issue in a manner applicable to countries under a wide range of circumstances.
Performance orientation: The indicator provides empirical data on ambient conditions or on-the-ground results for the issue of concern, or it is a “best available data” proxy for the outcome measures.
Established scientific methodology: The indicator is based on peer reviewed scientific data, data from the United Nations or other institutions charged with data collection.
Data quality: The data represent the best available measure. All potential datasets are reviewed for quality and verifiability. Those that do not meet baseline quality standards are discarded.
Time series availability: The data have been consistently measured across time, and efforts are made to continue consistent measurement.
Completeness: The dataset must have adequate global and temporal coverage to be considered.
To create the EPI we transform raw datasets into comparable performance indicators, which requires standardizing raw values according to population, land area, gross domestic product, and other common units of measurement. We then perform statistical transformations to normalize data distributions and ensure weights assigned in the aggregation phase affect data as intended and are not influenced by skewed numbers. For more details on the EPI’s calculation methods, see www.epi.yale.edu.
The transformed data are used to calculate performance indicators. We develop EPI indicators using a “proximity-to-target” methodology, which assesses how close each country is to an identified policy target. The targets are high performance benchmarks defined primarily by international or national policy goals or established scientific thresholds. The benchmarks for protected areas, for example, are based on international policy targets established by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). With 168 signatory countries and 196 Parties to the Convention, these benchmarks are widely accepted.
A high-performance benchmark can be determined through an analysis of the best-performing countries. Some of our indicators set benchmarks, for example, at the 95th percentile of the range of data. In some cases, the target is defined by established scientific consensus, as with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended average exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Scores are then converted to a scale of 0 to 100 by simple arithmetic calculation, with 0 being the farthest from the target and 100 being the closest (Figure 8). In this way, scores convey analogous meaning across indicators, policy issues, and throughout the EPI.
The EPI uses primary and secondary data from multilateral organizations, government agencies, and academic collaborations. Primary data are comprised of information gathered directly by human or technological monitoring, including satellite-derived estimates of forest cover and air quality. Secondary data include national-level statistics subject to the reporting and quality requirements established by data collection entities, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA).
MATERIAL THRESHOLDS
Is a particular issue relevant to a country’s environmental performance?
How do we account for differences in natural resource endowments, physical characteristics, and geography between countries? For example, how do we compare landlocked countries, for whom fisheries and marine sustainability are irrelevant, to island nations, or desert countries with little or no tree cover to nations with vast forests? In these cases, fisheries and forests may be considered “immaterial” or insignificant for a particular country (see Table 1). Only if an indicator meets the criteria for being “material,” or relevant, in a certain country is the indicator included in the calculation of the country’s score. For nations that do not meet the material threshold (e.g., a minimum area of land that is forested), the indicator or issue category is not included in the score calculation. For these countries, other indicators in the relevant category or categories receive proportionally greater weight.
By this reasoning, Least-Developed Countries (LDCs), which often include Small Island Developing States (SIDS), do not receive a score for Climate and Energy (see Climate and Energy Issue Profile), so the weightings for the remaining policy issues in the Ecosystem Vitality objective, including Agriculture, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Forests, and Fisheries, increase proportionally.
Indicator or Policy Issue
|
Not Evaluated If…
|
Biodiversity and Habitat – Marine Protected Areas
|
Landlocked or ratio of coastline to land area less than 0.01.
|
Climate and Energy
|
Least-developed countries and small-island developing states.
|
Fisheries
|
Landlocked or ratio of coastline to land area less than 0.01.
|
Forests
|
Total forested area less than 200 sq. km or less than 3 percent of total land area is covered with greater than 30 percent tree canopy.
|
FISHERIES PENALTIES
The 2016 EPI reduces a country's Fisheries score based on expert evaluations of the nation’s fisheries data quality. Table 2 describes the penalties applied based on data quality scores that experts provided for each country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), for each fishing sector (i.e., industrial, artisanal, recreational, and subsistence).11 See the Fisheries Issue Profile for more information.
Score
|
Confidence Interval +/ %
|
Corresponding IPCC criteria
|
2016 EPI Penalty
|
4 Very High
|
10
|
High agreement and robust evidence
|
0%
|
3 High
|
2
|
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