2001 Environmental Sustainability Index

1
2001 Environmental Sustainability Index

• Or,
• Can you really measure the unmeasurable?
• March 1, 2001
• Columbia Engineering School

2
Partners

• World Economic Forum, Global Leaders for Tomorrow
  Environment Task Force
• Yale University Center for Environmental Law and
  Policy
• Columbia University Center for International
  Earth Science Information Network

3
Key Findings

• Measuring Environmental Sustainability is
  Possible
• ESI Ranks 122 countries
• Based on 67 empirical measurements
• Economic conditions are important, but not a
  fundamental policy constraint
• Among countries at similar income levels, there
  is no correlation between GDP/capita and ESI.
• Data limitations present severe constraint on
  shift toward more analytically rigorous
  environmental decision-making

4
ESIs Purpose

• Benchmark environmental performance
• Identify comparatively environmental results that
  are above or below expectations
• Identify best practices
• Investigate interactions between environmental
  and economic performance

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Part of broader movement to measure sustainability

• UN Commission on Sustainable Development
• OECD
• Rio 10 initiatives
• Consultative Group on Sustainable Development
  Indicators
• Corporate-level efforts
• Global Reporting Initiative
• WBCSD
• National and Local efforts

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2001 Rankings
G\Davos2001\Map_AV\esi 2001_map.jpg
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Top Quintile
13 France 14 Uruguay 15 Germany 16 United
Kingdom 17 Ireland 18 Slovak Republic 19 Argentina
20 Portugal 21 Hungary 22 Japan 23 Lithuania 24 S
lovenia 25 Spain
1 Finland 2 Norway 3 Canada 4 Sweden 5 Switzerland
6 New Zealand 7 Australia 8 Austria 9 Iceland 10
Denmark 11 United States 12 Netherlands
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Bottom Quintile
98 Kyrgyz Republic 99 Bangladesh 100 Macedonia 101
Togo 102 Algeria 103 Benin 104 Burkina
Faso 105 Iran 106 Syria 107 Sudan 108 China 109 Le
banon 110 Ukraine
111 Niger 112 Philippines 113 Madagascar 114 Vietn
am 115 Rwanda 116 Kuwait 117 Nigeria 118 Libya 119
Ethiopia 120 Burundi 121 Saudi Arabia 122 Haiti
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Middle 3 Quintiles
26 Costa Rica 27 Estonia 28 Brazil 29 Czech
Republic 30 Bolivia 31 Chile 32 Latvia 33 Russia 3
4 Panama 35 Cuba 36 Colombia 37 Italy 38 Peru 39 C
roatia 40 Botswana 41 Greece 42 Zimbabwe 43 Nicara
gua 44 Ecuador 45 South Africa 46 Mauritius 47 Ven
ezuela 48 Armenia 49 Gabon
50 Mongolia 51 Sri Lanka 52 Malaysia 53 Israel 54
Paraguay 55 Fiji 56 Central African
Republic 57 Belarus 58 Poland 59 Moldova 60 Bulgar
ia 61 Guatemala 62 Papua New Guinea 63 Ghana 64 Ho
nduras 65 Singapore 66 Nepal 67 Egypt 68 Trinidad
and Tobago 69 Azerbaijan 70 Turkey 71 Mali 72 Domi
nican Republic 73 Mexico
74 Thailand 75 Bhutan 76 Cameroon 77 Mozambique 78
Albania 79 Belgium 80 Romania 81 Uganda 82 Kenya
83 Tunisia 84 El Salvador 85 Pakistan 86 Indonesia
87 Senegal 88 Jamaica 89 Morocco 90 Uzbekistan 91
Kazakhstan 92 Malawi 93 India 94 Tanzania 95 Sout
h Korea 96 Jordan 97 Zambia
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Methodology Guiding Principles

• Create ESI in a systematic, transparent, and
  reproducible manner.
• Be faithful to scientific literature as well as
  relevant to the major policy debates.
• Be applicable to a wide range of situations and
  conditions.
• Make use of what can actually be measured today
  but leave room for movement tomorrow.

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• 22 Indicators

• Air Quality
• Water Quantity
• Water Quality
• Biodiversity
• Terrestrial Systems

• Reducing Air Pollution
• Reducing Water Stress
• Reducing Ecosystem Stress
• Reducing Waste and Consumption Pressures
• Reducing Population Stress

• International Commitment
• Global-Scale Funding/Participation
• Protecting International Commons

• Science/Technology
• Capacity for Debate
• Regulation and Management
• Environmental Information
• Eco-Efficiency
• Reducing Public Choice Failures
• Private Sector Responsiveness

• Basic Sustenance
• Environmental Health

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Adding it all up

• For each of the 22 indicators, we identified 2-6
  variables to serve as quantitative measures (67
  total)
• We weighted the indicators equally in computing
  the Index

67 variables
22 indicators
Index
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Example environmental health
14
Variable scores are averaged to get indicator
scores
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ESI 2001 Makes Country-Level Data Available

• ES

• 122 countries
• Across 22 indicators
• With reference to income-based peer groups

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ESI Ranking
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5 Core Components
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22 indicators
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Analysis

• Spot broad patterns
• Identify successful (and failing) policies
• Explore correlations between environment and
  other factors (corruption, income, population)
• Specify causal relationships and drivers of good
  environmental performance

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Example Analysis of Economy-Environment
Relationship

• Does environmental sustainability rise or fall
  with growing income?
• Can poor countries afford good environmental
  performance?
• Does strong environmental performance harm
  national competitiveness?

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Does environmental sustainability rise or fall
with growing income?

• In general, higher levels of income are
  associated with higher ESI scores

90
Canada
80
70
France
UK
USA
Russia
Japan
Germany
60
Italy
50
India
40
China
30
ESI
20
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
GDP per capita (PPP), 1998
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But richer countries arent good at everything
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Can poor countries afford good environmental
performance?
.
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Does strong environmental performance harm
national competitiveness?
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Innovest rankings surprisingly highly correlated
with ESI
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Corruption also highly correlated

• Query How many corporate sustainability reports
  document levels of corruption?

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Conclusions
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Next steps

• Support efforts at major improvement in data
  creation and collection
• Interactive version of ESI
• More work at integrating information at different
  scales
• Build capacity for consistent measures over time

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Post-Davos fallout, banal

• Attack of the green meanies
• ESI is meaningless noise
• Related criticism from other narrower is better
  quarters
• Shallow Hurrah-ism
• Were number 3!
• Were less horrible than we first thought!
• Sulking bitterness
• The hell-hole that is Belgium

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Post-Davos Fallout-interesting

• Potential coordination with other indicator
  efforts in development
• National
• International (CSD, CSGDI, Rio10)
• City-based indicators
• Regional (NAFTA, Mercosur, Asia, )
• Discussion about intensive efforts at database
  creation
• Global map of wilderness areas
• Global water quality index
• Firm-level indicators
• Discussion about potential applications of ESI
• Linked to investment instruments (green bond
  fund, CDM)
• Research tool (Kuznets curves geographic
  influences)

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Where do firms fit in?

• Potential users of the Index
• Many aspects are relevant to business climate and
  risk analysis
• Government subsidies
• Transparency and consistency of environmental
  regulations
• Corruption
• Quality of life measures

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Where do firms fit in?

• Potential suppliers of data to the Index
• Often firms have access to high quality, relevant
  information
• Effectiveness of regulations, local practices
  concerning waste disposal and treatment, water
  quality, etc.
• Firms that wanted to could collect basic
  environmental information and provide it to a
  global clearinghouse

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Where do firms fit in?

• Strong interest in including firm-level
  information in future ESI
• Useful national indicator (do some countries do
  better than others at promoting firm-level
  environmental innovation?)
• Useful global stewardship indicator (which firms
  are helping to strengthen national sustainability
  efforts, which are taking advantage of weak
  ones?)
• Most frequently suggested addition to 2000 ESI
  was private sector responsibility measure
• Often firm-level activity is the most
  scientifically relevant scale
• There is much more relevant firm-level
  information collected than will ever be reported
  publicly.
• Are there creative strategies for liberating,
  filtering, and providing controlled access to
  some of that information?