Unreasonable terms

New environment index is not objective

The government seems justified in summarily rejecting the recently released Environment Performance Index (EPI) 2022, maintaining that it is based on unfounded assumptions and unscientific methods. The index has ranked India at the bottom among 180 countries. The authors of the index have claimed that the ranking is based on 40 performance indicators across 11 categories, which determine the progress towards improving environmental health, protecting ecosystem vitality, and mitigating climate change. India has, however, disputed the validity of many of these indicators, as also their extrapolation to arrive at flawed conclusions.

Significantly, many environment experts, too, concur with the government’s contentions. They have reservations about the parameters used by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network of Columbia University for crafting this index. Many of these parameters seem to have been chosen specifically to show that the developed countries are relatively good performers on the environmental front than others. Also, the authors of the EPI are all from developed countries. Those conversant with the issues concerning the environment imperatives of the developing countries have not even been consulted while preparing this index. Little wonder, therefore, that India has been assigned a dismally low score of just 18.9 out of 100. This is below its neighbouring countries like Myanmar (19.4), Vietnam (20.1), Bangladesh (23.1), Pakistan (24.6), Nepal (28.3), and Sri Lanka (34.7). On the other hand, the developed countries have been given higher scores. Denmark has, for instance, been placed at the top with a score of 77.9, followed by the UK (77.7) and Finland (76).

The EPI’s rankings seem untrustworthy also because another Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), brought out just a few months back by the Germanwatch and CAN International, had placed India at 10th position among 64 countries. These contrasting inferences drawn by the two almost contemporary indices show the difference that the selection of indicators and the weights attached to them can make to the final outcome of any ranking exercise. India comes among the top few on the basis of per-capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But when it comes to total emissions, it drops down to a much lower rung. The assessment model used by the Yale and Columbia university scientists seems to lack the aptness needed for objective and logical conclusions. Even the data is said to have been used selectively to project the developed countries in a better light.

A significant indicator of the climate policy objectives, as pointed out by New Delhi in its rebuttal to the EPI, is the projected GHG emissions in 2050. The EPI has estimated this level on the basis of the average rate of change in emissions during the past 10 years, which is too short a period to capture historic trends or make future projections. The significant factors that have been disregarded in these calculations include the creation and use of renewable energy capacity, energy-use efficiency, and the extent of available carbon sinks. Logically, the size of forests and wetlands, the key carbon sinks, should have been given considerable weight in estimating any country’s net emissions. But this is not so in the case of the 2022 EPI. India has been striving to strike a fine balance between economic development and environment protection.