"Yale’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI) can be critical to measuring national sustainability efforts -- (a) ranking of 180 economies across 32 environmental health indicators.
... Despite the decades-long trend of globalization, national environmental policies have proved to be widely divergent.
... Scandinavian countries, which tend to have a high GDP per capita, show strong and consistent results across EPI parameters.
Denmark for instance—which ranks first overall—leads the world in slowing its growth in CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile, neighbor Sweden leads in landfill and recycling treatment, while wastewater treatment is led by a handful of countries within and beyond Scandinavia including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Sweden.
In North America, Canada claims top spot in the biodiversity and habitat category, while the U.S. ranks sixth in agricultural diversity globally.
In Asia, Singapore leads the world in fishery health and sustainability.
... What Does “Green” Mean?
Each high-level performance indicator with the EPI, like “environmental health”, is broken into subsections.
... multiple countries can rank first in any given category.
... For instance, 30 countries tie for first in marine protection, all with scores of 100.
This shows that many economies are prioritizing this area of sustainability.
... Infrastructure costs are one reason why wealthier nations tend to fare better across sustainability measures.
Everything from air pollution reduction and water treatment, to hazardous waste control and mitigation of public health crises are especially expensive ...
... China for instance leads the world in the adoption of electric vehicle technology.
Post-Pandemic Outlook
... indexes like the EPI provide a helpful benchmark for economies to compare efforts."
