India ranks 5th from bottom in Environmental Performance Index 2024, high emissions again

New Delhi: India, the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, was ranked among the lowest ranked countries for air quality, projected emissions, biodiversity and habitat in the 2024 Environmental Performance Index (EPI).

India was ranked 176th out of 180 countries, just above Pakistan, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, in the overall index, released on June 5 by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Columbia Center for the International Science Information Network of the Earth. This is a slight improvement over the last EPI in which India was at the bottom.

This year, EPI introduced the biodiversity and habitat category to check how countries have protected their existing biodiversity and ecosystems and found that many protected areas in countries have buildings or agricultural land that have encroached on them.

India’s performance lags on several indicators mainly due to its heavy dependence on coal, which contributes not only to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also to high levels of air pollution. In air quality, India ranks 177th, just above Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, and in projected emissions by 2025, it ranks 172nd.

In South Asia, which, as a region, ranks lowest in the EPI, India is the largest emitter of transboundary pollution, affecting residents of Bangladesh, the report said. Among the eight regions considered in the report, Global West and East Europe are at the top and Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia at the bottom.

The EPI also ranks India 178th, just above China and Micronesia, but the report clarifies that this may be due to a lack of data. India, China and Turkey have restricted access to 95% of their submissions to the World Protected Areas database, so EPI could not accurately assess their performance in this category.

The report said India secured a better ranking (133) on climate change, largely because it has made strides in investing in renewable energy and its goal of moving to net zero emissions by 2070, according to the report.

The report, however, said, “India will require an additional $160 billion annually in climate change mitigation investments to meet its goals.”

Categories like solid waste management, forestry and agriculture are where India performed relatively better. However, underwhelming results in the air quality, emissions and biodiversity categories lowered its overall performance.

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Not the first time

This is not the first time that India has scored low in the Environmental Performance Index, which has been producing reports since 2002. The latest EPI in 2022 ranked India at the bottom due to low scores on almost the same indicators .

The projected greenhouse gas emissions indicator, added in 2022 for the first time, measured whether countries were on track to achieve net zero emissions of CO2, methane, fluorinated gases and nitrous oxide by 2050. with India, at the time, ranked in the bottom 10 as well. India, in 2022, also scored low on lead pollution, drinking water pollution and terrestrial biome protection.

However, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, in 2022, ‘rejected’ the Environmental Protection Index, saying it was “based on unfounded assumptions”. The main problems pointed out by the MOEFCC were that the report does not include India’s wetlands and forests, which are carbon sinks, and that the projected greenhouse gas emissions indicator was developed by modeling past emissions of only 10 years. The ministry also said that the indicators have been assigned an arbitrary weight without explanation.

These issues with the EPI 2022 were also from independent researchers, including Chandra Bhusan, CEO of thinktank iForest, who told Mongabay in 2022 that the EPI “has a lot of subjectivity. Their choice of indicators, weighting and even the ranking methodology has problems.”

Estonia overtakes Denmark

The EPI is issued every two years to assess countries’ performance in achieving the targets of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the 2015 Paris Agreement, and most recently, the Kunming-Montreal 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework – key mitigation measures of climate change at the global level.

Based on all 58 indicators, the number one country in the index is Estonia, which reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 59% compared to 1990 levels, the report said.

Another reason Estonia is at the top, ahead of Denmark, the leading country in 2022, is due to its good ranking in the biodiversity and habitat indicator that shows the status of protected areas in the country – 20% of its lands and seas are Protected areas.

“The 2024 Environmental Performance Index highlights a range of critical sustainability challenges from climate change to biodiversity loss and beyond – and reveals trends that suggest countries around the world must redouble their efforts to protect critical ecosystems and the planet’s vitality ours,” said Daniel. C. Esty, dean of the Yale College of Environmental Law and Policy, in a press release.

(Editing by Madhurita Goswami)

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