Deciphering India’s 176th Global Rank in the Environmental Performance Index, 2024

Introduction

India’s latest rank is 176th out of 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) released by Yale University for the year 2024. India’s position in this comprehensive and highly prestigious ranking has consistently declined from 155th in 2014 to 176th in 2024. This downward trend is recorded despite renewed climate change targets and ambitious commitments at the national, regional, and international levels. The latest index results also show that India’s performance in South Asia is very poor. Of the eight countries in the South Asia region, India’s EPI rank is 7th. The regional ranking has also fallen from 5th in 2014.

India’s EPI Ranking

Estonia, with 75.7 points, is the top EPI-ranked country in 2024. India is fifth from the bottom, ahead of countries like Myanmar, Laos, and Pakistan. India’s regional rank in South Asia is 7th out of a total of eight countries.

India’s EPI Ranking in 2024

The data in the table above show that scores under different policy objectives have only marginally increased in the last 10 years, yet India remains a low-performing country across all categories. The largest improvement was recorded under the theme of climate change, where India improved its score by more than 10.2 points over the last ten years. This article attempts to analyze India’s environmental performance across the three policy sectors and 11 issues selected by Yale University to build this index.

The Environmental Performance Index, 2024

The Environmental Performance Index 2024, developed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, carefully analyzes data for 58 different performance indicators. These indicators are divided across 11 environmental issues, which are further grouped into three policy objectives: Ecosystem Vitality, Environmental Health, and Climate Change. Each policy objective is given a different weight. The EPI has evolved over the last two decades. Until 2016, climate change was not a separate policy objective; performance indicators related to climate change were included under environmental health or ecosystem vitality.

Ecosystem Vitality, which includes issues such as biodiversity and habitat, forests, air pollution, fisheries, agriculture, and wastewater, is given the highest weight (45 out of 100 points). This sector assesses a country’s performance regarding the status of its natural wealth and bioresources.

Climate Change is the second-largest policy sector in the index, allotted 30% of the total points. This objective incorporates issues such as the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide, black carbon, and land use change. In total, 11 performance indicators are analyzed to assess a country’s efforts to address climate change.

Environmental Health is the third and final policy objective, allotted 25% of the points. This objective includes issues such as air quality, water and sanitation, heavy metals, and waste generation. Thirteen different performance indicators help assess a country’s ability to secure good environmental health for its people.

The EPI aims to provide comprehensive and easily interpreted qualitative data for policymakers worldwide to help meet international goals set by platforms such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement (2015), and Biodiversity Targets. The report states:“In each iteration, the EPI expands the scope of its sustainability scorecard to reflect advances in our scientific understanding of environmental issues. The 2024 EPI distills data on dozens of sustainability issues into a single score. To make the metrics easy to interpret, we transform raw environmental data into indicators that score countries on a 0-100 scale, from worst to best performance. For a more careful examination of priority topics and their trends, we encourage users to dive into the disaggregated indicators and data underpinning them. All the indicator scores, the underlying data, and further methodological details are available on our website: www.epi.yale.edu.”

India’s Ecosystem Vitality Score

Ecosystem Vitality is a composite score representing performance indicators such as biodiversity, habitat, forests, fisheries, air pollution, agriculture, and water resources. The purpose of this score is to understand a country’s performance in managing its natural resources and conserving its biodiversity and natural ecosystems. The report notes:“Ecosystem Vitality covers a broader range of environmental issues than the other two policy objectives and includes indicators that are weakly, and sometimes negatively, correlated with countries’ wealth. Strong performance on some issues is offset by poor performance in others, resulting in a compressed range of scores.”

Luxembourg is the highest-ranking country in 2024 for ecosystem vitality, with a score of 83.1, while Cabo Verde is the worst-performing, with a score of just 22.7. India’s global ranking in ecosystem vitality is 171, with a score of 30.4. Performance indicators under ecosystem vitality reveal that India’s scores in biodiversity, forests, and fish conservation have fallen over the last ten years, leading to a decline in its overall global ranking.

The raw data from the 2024 EPI reveal that, out of 34 performance indicators under the ecosystem vitality theme, 10 critical indicators have shown significant decreases in their relative scores. These indicators include the Species Habitat Index, Red List Index, loss of primary forests, loss of tree cover, loss of fish stock, ozone exposure, and increasing pesticide pollution in agriculture.

The sharpest declines were observed in indicators such as the Species Habitat Index, pesticide pollution risk, tree cover loss, fish stock, and ozone exposure. The pesticide pollution risk declined by 17.1 points, justified by the excessive increase in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in India over the last two decades. Furthermore, the decline in forest density, despite an increase in total forest cover, has contributed to the loss of India’s overall ranking under ecosystem vitality.

Of the 34 performance indicators in the ecosystem vitality policy theme, many have persistently scored very low. This suggests that not enough attention has been paid to these critical areas. Low-performing indicators in this segment include marine key biodiversity area protection, marine habitat protection, species protection, a high number of threatened species, and the climate resilience of ecosystems to retain species varieties. Scores for all these indicators have been below 5 out of 100 points. Persistent negligence at the policy level has threatened the vitality of India’s entire ecosystem.

Environmental Health Score of India

Environmental health, as a policy objective of the EPI, attempts to assess the actions and effectiveness of countries in protecting public health from various environmental hazards. The report states:

“Environmental Health, which measures how well countries protect public health from exposure to air pollution and other environmental risk factors, has the broadest range of scores, from Iceland at 90.2 to Lesotho at 13.0.

Wealthier countries with strong environmental regulations are generally able to invest in the infrastructure required to control pollution and minimize the health impacts of exposure to environmental risk factors. Lacking these resources, low-income nations, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, tend to get the lowest scores on Environmental Health.”

In 2024, Iceland emerged as the top-ranked country under environmental health, with a score of 90.2, followed by Norway, Finland, and Sweden. India is ranked 177th out of 180 countries, ahead of only Burundi, Pakistan, and Lesotho. This policy objective comprises four environmental issues: air quality, sanitation and drinking water, heavy metals, and waste management, with a total of 13 performance indicators.

Data show that India’s global ranking on various environmental issues under this policy theme is abysmally low, except for waste management, where India is ranked 86th in 2024. However, it is worth noting that India has not made any significant progress in the last 10 years to further improve its ranking in waste management.

Three critical performance indicators under this policy theme—exposure to Sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds—have seen decreases in their scores over the years. Ground-level exposure to volatile organic compounds includes concentrations of ethane, propane, formaldehyde, and isoprene. The overall score for air quality in India is just 6.8 out of 100, highlighting the severity of air pollution.

Sanitation and drinking water are another important area affecting human health. Both unsafe drinking water and unsafe sanitation have significant social and economic ramifications. Despite much attention given to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, India’s score remains very low, resulting in unsafe drinking water and sanitation for a large section of the population.

Heavy metal pollution due to mixing of industrial effluents in drinking water sources, both on the surface and underground, is another factor causing a low performance.

India’s Climate Change Ranking

India is an important stakeholder in the global mission to combat climate change. After the USA, European Union, and China, India is a significant contributor to global emissions, leading to global warming and climate change. As an active participant in the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COPs), India has made progressive commitments to reduce its emissions and achieve net zero by 2070.

The climate change policy segment of the EPI assesses the contributions of different countries to reducing emissions and addressing climate change. The 2024 EPI report states:“The Climate Change Mitigation issue category measures progress to combat global climate change, which exacerbates other environmental threats and imperils human health and safety. It is composed of 11 indicators: adjusted emission growth rates for four greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, F-gases, and N2O) and one climate pollutant (black carbon); adjusted emission growth rates of carbon dioxide with country-specific targets based on their allocated share of the remaining carbon budget, projected greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 and projected cumulative emissions to 2050 relative to countries’ allocated share of the remaining carbon budget; net carbon fluxes from land cover change; and GHG growth rate adjusted by either emissions intensity or by per capita emissions.”

Estonia, with 82.8 points, is the highest-ranking country in the climate change segment, followed by Finland, Greece, and the UK. India’s global ranking in this segment is 133rd, which is better compared to its rankings in ecosystem vitality and environmental health. However, the cumulative score for climate change mitigation is just 35 out of 100 points.

Scores for some critical performance indicators have not seen substantial change over the years. For example, projected emissions in 2050 remain a zero-scoring indicator, indicating that the country has no strategic plan or action to achieve net zero emissions for the four greenhouse gases. India’s scores for efforts to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide, carbon, and F-gases remain very low. In some sectors, such as reduction of black carbon emissions and cumulative emissions relative to the carbon budget, India has performed better.

Conclusion

As a key player in international climate change negotiations, India has a great responsibility to lead the way toward a more just and sustainable world order. India aspires to become a five-trillion-dollar economy while also reducing emissions and meeting its net zero target. However, the country’s consistently falling EPI ranking does not align with its ecological and economic aspirations.

The 2024 EPI report observes:“Wealth (as measured by GDP per capita) is positively correlated with countries’ scores on Ecosystem Vitality and Climate Change, but the relationship is weaker (Spearman correlation, rS = 0.71 for Environmental Health, compared to 0.52 and 0.41 for Ecosystem Vitality and Climate Change, respectively).”

While India’s economy is the third or fourth largest in the world, its per capita income is much lower compared to well-performing countries. The Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS) has argued that ecological and economic sustainability go hand in hand. In fact, the regeneration of natural wealth has huge potential to create jobs and significantly contribute to the nation’s economy.

An estimate by Mahajan and Singh (2022) suggest, India needs to invest 2.5% of its GDP annually in the regeneration of natureregeneration. Furthermore, a paper entitled “Hara-Bhara Swaraj” by Vijay Mahajan (2024) argues that India needs about Rs. 38.1 lakh crore over five years for nature regeneration at 2024 prices. He further estimates that, once nature regeneration work is completed, enhanced productivity will lead to ongoing employment for 5.54 crore people per year on a steady basis from the sixth year onward.

India’s 176th rank in the latest Environmental Performance Index is yet another warning to immediately reconsider the sustainability of its ecology, and economy. This requires a new developmental approach that focuses on ecologically sustainable wealth creation.

References

1. Block, S., Emerson, J. W., Esty, D. C., de Sherbinin, A., Wendling, Z. A., et al. (2024). 2024 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy.
2. Hsu, A., J. Emerson, M. Levy, A. de Sherbinin, L. Johnson, O. Malik, J. Schwartz, and M. Jaiteh. (2014). The 2014 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, Chttps://www.rgics.org/policy-watch-growth-with-employment-march-2023/T: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. Available: epi.yale.edu.
3. Hsu, A. et al. (2016). 2016 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale University. Available: epi.yale.edu.
4. Mahajan, Vijay and Jeet Singh, 2022, “Lives, Livelihoods and Environment: The Challenge of Sustainable Development Goals in India”, in Financial Crises, Poverty and Environmental Sustainability: Challenges in the Context of the SDGs and Covid-19 Recovery (ed), Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87417-9_7
5. Mahajan, Vijay, 2024, “Hara Bhara Swaraj – A look at India’s Future through a NEW LENS”. Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS), New Delhi