Environmental Performance Index 2022

EPI 2022 UPSC: Relevance

• GS 3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

EPI 2022 report: Context

• Recently, World Economic Forum has released the Environment Performance Index (EPI) 2022 where India was ranked at the bottom out of the 180 countries.

Environmental Performance Index 2022: Key points

• According to the report, India is among those countries in the world that have the worst environmental health.
• India scored poorly on various measures such as control of corruption, rule of law, and government effectiveness.
• The deterioration is huge as in the EPI-2020, India was ranked 168th out of 180 countries.
• Denmark was ranked first in the sustainability and environmental health categories this time.

EPI 2022 India: Concerns raised by India

• A new indicator in the Climate Policy objective is Projected GHG Emissions levels in 2050. This is computed based on average rate of change in emission of the last 10 years instead of modelling that takes into account a longer time period, extent of renewable energy capacity and use, additional carbon sinks, energy efficiency etc. of respective countries.
• Both forests and wetlands of the country are crucial carbon sinks which have not been factored in while computing the projected GHG emissions trajectory upto 2050 given by EPI 2022.
• Historical data on the lowest emission trajectory has been ignored in the above computation.
• The weight of indictors in which the country was performing well has been reduced and reasons for change in assignment of weights has not been explained in the report.
• The principle of equity is given very low weightage in the form of the indicators like GHG emission per capita and GHG Emission intensity trend. The CBDR-RC principle is also barely reflected in the composition of the index.
• India has already achieved the target of 40% of installed electricity capacity from non- fossil fuel-based sources.
• The indicators on Water quality, Water use efficiency, Waste Generation per capita which are closely linked to Sustainable Consumption and Production are not included in the Index.
• The Index emphasizes the extent of Protected Areas rather than the quality of protection that they afford. Management Effectiveness Evaluation of Protected areas and eco-sensitive regions is not factored into the computation of Biodiversity Indices.
• The index computes extent of ecosystems but not their condition or productivity. Efforts must be made to include metrics that truly capture ecosystem productivity such that regulatory, provisioning as well as cultural services provided by various ecosystems like forests, wetlands, croplands are assessed and reflected in performance.
• Indicators like Agro biodiversity, soil health, food loss and waste are not included even though they are important for developing countries with large agrarian populations.

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