Most environmental countries in the world
The EPI (Environmental Performance Index) studies the most environmental countries in the world. In their website, you will see a map representing the most and least environmental countries. In order to rank the countries, it tracks ten policy categories covering environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. Within those two categories, they classify for example the air pollution, divided on the effects on humans and the effects on ecosystem, the biodiversity and habitat or the agriculture.
This is an study done by the American University of Columbia and Yale and it is updated every two years since 2006. Also, we can compare the changes in the ranking of each country from the first editions to the last one in 2010.
One of the conclusions is that European countries are the ones that register the best environmental conditions in the world. Among the 20 first countries, 13 are European. The study also highlights the the less environmental countries and one that has gone from the position 39 in the ranking to the 61 is United States since every year is more worrying the urban air pollution or the greenhouse gas emissions. Also, China and India are very low in the list in the positions 121 and 123 respectively.
What do you think the top 10 greener countries are? In the last study, Iceland has been the first one, taking the place to Switzerland that had been the first since 2008. Here is the list:
1. Island (93.5): It is the first one because, among other reasons, it has access to water in good conditions and it has one of the lowest greenhouse emissions per capita.
2. Switzerland (89.1): one of the world’s richest countries in terms of GDP per capita. It has good quality on sanitation and potable water or care of the ecosystems.
3. Costa Rica (86.4): great natural ecosystem that allows it to live from ecoturism.
4. Sweden (86): achieves high performance due to the indicators related to human health. Negative points are air pollution and marine areas.
5. Norway (81.1): Another of the world’s richest country to reach the top. It has 100 points in the quality of water and the forest management. However, the offshore oil production generates an important quantity of greenhouse emissions.
6. Mauritius (80.6): a country of undeniable natural beauty that lives much of ecoturism.
7. France (78.2): It has a high rank mainly because of the indicators that affect human health but fails in climate change or air pollution.
8. Austria (78.1): good results in the indicators of health and environments but air pollution subtracts them points.
9. Cuba (78.1): good results in sanitation and care of the forests but fails in sea or air pollution.
10. Colombia (76.8): it has one of the great biodiversity in the world but pollution is one of its worst indicators.
