Case Study
The Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) is a numerical index, produced by the Environmental Performance Measurement Project, that measures the progress of 146 countries around the world toward environmental sustainability.
The ESI is a complex measure of the progress that a country is making towards improving and maintianing the quality of the environment. Its calculation includes straightforward indicators of environmental quality such as drinking water quality. It also includes indicators of each country's capacity to improve the quality of their environment, such as scientific research. Evidence of efforts towards environmental sustainability such as participation in international environmental agreements is also considered.
Seventy-six data sets, tracking factors such as land conservation, water quality, disease, waste management, and environmental regulations, are aggregated into 21 categories of environmental sustainability. These are further compiled into 5 core components.
{Include Figure 1 from the report here}
Environmental Systems
This component measures air, water, and land quality, and biodiversity.
Reducing Stresses
This component measures countries efforts to reduce several forms of pollution and other impacts on the environment such as deforestation, waste management, and population growth.
Reducing Human Vulnerability
This component measures health issues related to environmental quality, such as safe drinking water availability, undernourishment, and early childhood and infectious disease death rates.
Social and Institutional Capacity to Respond to Environmental Challenges
This component measures political and economic factors important to maintaining and implementing the institutions, programs, and policies needed to improve environmental quality.
Global Stewardship
This component measures the extent to which each country participates in international agreements on the quality of the global environment, such as reducing greenhouse gasses.
Investigating the ESI data can answer the following questions:
- How can environmental quality be measured?
- How do different countries compare in making progress towards environmental sustainability?
- How do individual component indicators contribute to the ESI?
Comparing the overall ESI scores and that of individual componets can reveal some interesting patterns and surprises. For example, how important are economics and government to the Environmental Sustainability Index? Is environmental sustainability only something that can be accomplished by industrialized countries with stable governments that can afford to invest in the environment? Or can poorer countries also achieve a high ESI score?
Mapping factors such as Environmental Governance against overall ESI scores reveals an expected pattern. Countries with stable and effective governments have higher ESI scores. There are also some interesting exceptions to consider.
[maps of just the countries shown here, UK and Iran, and then further dwon Taiwan and Uruguay and scatter plot of ESI vs. CAP GOV)]
The United Kingdom and Iran have Envrionmental Governance scores representing the top and bottom of this category. The United Kingdom, with a score of 1.37, ranks 9th in the world, while Iran, with a score of -1.52 ranks 146th, the lowest score of the countries ranked. However, they both have very similar , ESI scores: 46.1 for the United Kingdom, and 44.5 for Iran. What other factors account for the lower score of the United Kingdom despite its high score in Environmental Governance.
Another interesting comparison is Taiwan* and Uruguay. In this case, both of these countries have similar scores for Environmental Governance. Uruguay ranks 38th with a score of .40, and Taiwan ranks 35th with a score of .56. Yet the ESI scores of these countries are at the opposite ends of the range. Uruguay has the 3rd highest ESI score in the world at 71.8, and Taiwan has the second lowest, ranking 145th with a score of 32.7. What are the other factors that account for this large difference in ESI scores between these two countries with similar Envrionmental Governance rankings?
*Do we need to note that Taiwan is not really a country in case anyone get's upset with that?
