News
2 Feb 2012
JRC contributes to the Environmental Performance Index
The JRC's Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC) has contributed to the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) launched at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos on January 26th 2012. The EPI is produced by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the JRC.
With its expertise on composite indicators and sensitivity analysis, the JRC has contributed to the EPI by evaluating the uncertainties underlying the index and the sensitivity of the country rankings to the methodological choices made during the development of the Index. The JRC analysis suggests that the 2012 EPI structure (tested on an eleven year period over 2000-2010) appears a decisive improvement over past releases of the index. In particular, the balancing of the pillars (p. 21 of the main EPI report) is based on JRC recommendations.
Yale and Columbia Universities have invited the JRC to assess each EPI report since its launch in 2006.
According to the top 20 results of the 2012 EPI, thirteen EU Member States - Latvia, Luxembourg, France, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Slovakia, Netherlands, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Finland - lead the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges.
Latvia has the highest progress over 2000-2010, as measured by the new Trend EPI, followed by Azerbaijan, Romania, Albania, and Egypt. Latvia, which ranks second in the overall EPI and first in the Trend EPI, has launched major energy and environmental initiatives in recent years - eliminating coal from its power generation and actively reforesting - and the results come through loud and clear. The United Kingdom ranks 9th on the 2012 EPI list and 20th on the Trend EPI, which demonstrates that significant progress has been made over the last decade on a number of environmental issues.
The United States (49th) is placed significantly behind other industrialized nations, including France (6th), the United Kingdom (9th), Germany (11th), and Japan (23rd). In addition, the US places 77th in the Trend EPI rankings, suggesting that little progress has been made on environmental challenges over the last ten years.
Links:
- JRC website on composite indicators