EPI – Environmental Performance Index | Scienceray

EPI or Environmental Performance Index is an index which assess a country’s performance based on 25 metrics aggregated into 10 policy categories including environmental health, air quality, water resource management, forestry, agriculture, biodiversity and habitat, fisheries and climate change which covers both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. These indicators could provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals.

The first EPI was published in 2002 developed from the Pilot Environmental Performance Index. It was preceded by the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) implemented between 1999 and 2005. Up to date, a total of 163 countries have joined this programme.

The EPI was developed by the 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 methodology of this EPI is each country has responsible to carry out analysis and assessment on all the required 25 indicators and the report would be submitted to the Yale University and Columbia University for further evaluation. The results would be an index which can be used by country’s decision makers such as policy makers, environmental scientists, and the advocates and also for general public.

For 2010, the top 5 countries with high EPI were Iceland, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden and Norway while the bottom 5 were Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone.

The EPI scores can be viewed at this link EPI map. The index can be viewed according to the metrics/indicator or by scale. Hope the information provided by the EPI can also help you to decide which country is suitable for your end of year vacation.

Thanx for reading.

=)

*As published in Scienceray http://scienceray.com/biology/ecology/epi-environmental-performance-index/