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Study Shows Only Six Nations
Achieved Environmental Goals
A pilot, nation-by-nation study
of environmental performance
shows that just six nations -
led by New Zealand, followed by
five from northern Europe - have
achieved 85 percent success in
meeting a set of critical
environmental goals ranging from
clean drinking water and low
ozone levels to sustainable
fisheries and low greenhouse-gas
emissions.
The report, which has been
reviewed by other specialists
both in the United States and
internationally, ranks 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 ranked among the 20
lowest-scoring countries, with
overall success ratios of 41.1
and 47.7, respectively.
The pilot study, called the 2006
Environmental Performance Index,
was jointly produced by Yale and
Columbia Universities.
The study, a new variant on the
methodology used by the two
universities in their
Environmental Sustainability
index, produced in 2002 and
2005, was designed to focus more
attention on how various
governments have played the
environmental hands they have
been dealt, said Daniel C. Esty,
the director of the Yale Center
for Environmental Law and Policy
and an author of the report.
The earlier sustainability
measurements "tell you something
about long-term trajectories and
folds in issues like the
starting points, which vary
wildly," 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, which
meets this week in Davos,
Switzerland. Mr. Esty said it
was also designed as a tool to
help monitor progress on the
environmental issues included
among the Millennium Development
goals adopted by 189 nations at
the United Nations Millennium
Summit.
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