Twenty-eighth:
United States Ranks 28th on Environment, a New Study Says, by Felicity Barringer, NY Times: A pilot nation-by-nation study of environmental performance..., jointly produced by Yale and Columbia Universities, ranked the United States 28th over all, behind most of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Chile, but ahead of Russia and South Korea.
The bottom half of the rankings is largely filled with the countries of Africa and Central and South Asia. Pakistan and India both rank among the 20 lowest-scoring countries... The pilot study, called the 2006 Environmental Performance Index, has been reviewed by specialists both in the United States and internationally.
Using a new ... methodology the ... Environmental Sustainability Index ... was intended to focus more attention on how various governments have played the environmental hands they have been dealt... The earlier sustainability measurements "tell you something about long-term trajectories," Mr. Esty said. "We think this tool has a much greater application in the policy context." ... The 16 indicators used in the latest study, the report says, provide "a powerful tool for evaluating environmental investments and improving policy results."
The report will be issued during the World Economic Forum, an annual conclave of business and political leaders which meets in Davos, Switzerland, this week. ...[T]he report acknowledges "serious data gaps" that resulted in leaving more than 65 countries out of the rankings. In addition, some thorny methodological issues, like how to measure land degradation or loss of wetlands, have no widely accepted solutions...
