Naujienos

*"All countries must learn" on sustainability

The most comprehensive environmental ranking of world nations has been re-released after a three-year gap. The 2005 environmental sustainability index (ESI) demonstrates that all countries have something to learn from others, stressed US academic experts behind the exercise.

ESI was first launched in 2000, then profiling just 50 countries. Its coverage has now been expanded to 146 nations. It rates countries' performance across five categories, based on 21 indicators, in turn based on 76 detailed data sets. The pressure-state-response framework used in ESI has also championed by the European environment agency (ED 16/09/97).

ESI's key benefit, say its authors, is to enable governments to benchmark their performance against others, something businesses have long been doing. In particular, ESI enables peer group comparisons of the underlying contributing factors to countries' overall score.

Environmentalists harshly criticised ESI when it was last issued in 2002 because so many rich countries appeared - and still appear - at the top of the rankings. The new edition rejects this criticism - the index includes an ecological footprint measure of consumption-related environmental stress as favoured by green groups, it says, but in a broader framework (ED 06/02/02).

Judged by overall scores, European countries generally emerge strongly, for example taking four out of the five top rankings. Most European countries appear in the top quarter. Only five appear in the third quarter, and one in the lowest (see table below).

Scandinavian countries rule supreme, not only in a European but also a global context. The EU-15 and ten new members are widely scattered below this with no apparent pattern. A few countries, notably Poland and Belgium, emerge as far behind the others.

ESI attempts to make more sense of the data by identifying seven clusters of countries based on shared patterns across the system's five basic categories. European countries virtually all appear in just three of these.

A first cluster comprises rich countries with relatively strong environmental systems, suffering only moderate stress, and which are showing moderate environmental stewardship. All Europe's Scandinavian top four are in this category.

A second cluster comprises rich countries which again are showing moderate environmental stewardship, but against a background of relatively poor environmental systems and high environmental stresses. Almost all other EU-15 states plus Slovenia are in this category.

The third cluster is distinguished by being poorer and by poor stewardship, against a background of moderate environmental systems and stresses. The rest of the new member states plus Greece fall in this category.

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European countries in the 2005 ESI
Rank Country Index Cluster
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1 Finland 75.1 1
2 Norway 73.4 1
4 Sweden 71.7 1
5 Iceland 70.8 1
7 Switzerland 63.7 2
10 Austria 62.7 2
15 Latvia 60.4 3
19 Croatia 59.5 3
21 Ireland 59.2 2
22 Lithuania 58.9 3
26 Denmark 58.2 2
27 Estonia 58.2 3
29 Slovenia 57.5 2
31 Germany 56.9 2
36 France 55.2 2
37 Portugal 54.2 2
41 Netherlands 53.7 2
48 Slovakia 52.8 3
54 Hungary 52.0 3
66 UK 50.2 2
67 Greece 50.1 3
69 Italy 50.1 2
70 Bulgaria 50.0 3
76 Spain 48.8 2
91 Turkey 46.6 3
92 Czech Republic 46.6 3
94 Romania 46.2 3
102 Poland 45.0 3
112 Belgium 44.4 2
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