Environmental Performance Index

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is a method which involves the quantification and numerical modeling of the environmental performance of a countries’ policies.?

Who frames the EPI?

The EPI index is developed by the Yale University and Columbia University in the collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

What has been said in the EPI?

• Till date, EPI has released very few reports.
• In a most recently released report in 2018, India was ranked in 177 out of 180 countries.
• While India has been ranked among the bottom 5 countries on the Environmental Performance Index 2018 and India has fallen 36 points from 141 in 2016.
• India’s low ranking was mainly due to its poor performance in the air pollution category where the environment health policy of India has been questioned and the deaths due to air pollution categories.
• Several deaths in India have been attributed to the super small PM2.5 pollutants which have risen sharply in the past decade. PM2.5 causes over 16,40,113 deaths in India annually.

Other parts of the Report

• The nation which has topped the index is Switzerland with France, Denmark, Malta, and Sweden rounding out the top five in the list.
• The five countries in the bottom five of the list are India, Bangladesh, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nepal.
• Diseases related to the airborne pollutants have to lead to the loss of over 2/3rd of all life-years which are lost to the environmentally related deaths and disabilities observed in the general population.