The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) (2010) is a leading ranking of the environmental performance of countries around the world based on 10 policy categories and 25 performance indicators grouped under two key objectives: environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The 25 indicators and 10 policy categories provide measures of agriculture, air pollution, biodiversity and habitat, climate change, the environmental burden of disease, fisheries, and forestry.
When countries are ranked on the basis of Environmental Health alone, the results are quite different and, possibly, more in line with conventional expectations, for better or worse. The table below presents the Environmental Health Ranking for the top 25 countries.
It stands to reason that developing countries tend to pay closer attention to Ecosystem Vitality and developed countries tend to focus more on Environmental Health while. More people in less developed countries depend more heavily on their local ecosystem for their basic needs of food, shelter, and health. Things like habitat destruction and the loss of biodiversity tend to have more serious, direct consequences in these conditions than they do for most people in more advanced economies.
The chart below presents another perspective on the environmental performance rankings by showing the divergence in scores on Environmental Health and Ecosystem Vitality for more and less developed countries.
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