Fueled by advances in information technology, data-driven decisionmaking has transformed every corner of society, from business to biology. In the policy domain, quantitative performance metrics have reshaped decisionmaking processes in many arenas, including economics, health care, and education. The 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) brings a similar data-driven, fact-based empirical approach to environmental protection and global sustainability.
Policymakers in the environmental field have also begun to recognize the importance of incorporating analytically rigorous foundations into their decisionmaking. However, while policymakers are calling for increased intellectual rigor in environmental planning, large data gaps and a lack of time-series data still hamper efforts to track many environmental issues, spot emerging problems, assess policy options, and gauge effectiveness. The EPI seeks to being to fill these gaps and, more broadly, to draw attention to the value of accurate data and sound analysis as the basis for environmental policymaking.
The EPI focuses on two overarching environmental objectives:
- reducing environmental stresses to human health;
- promoting ecosystem vitality and sound natural resource management.
These broad goals also reflect the policy priorities of environmental authorities around the world and the international community’s intent in adopting Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals, to “ensure environmental sustainability.” The two overarching objectives are gauged using 25 performance indicators tracked in six well-established policy categories, which are then combined to create a final score.
The 2008 EPI deploys a proximity-to-target methodology, which quantitatively tracks national performance on a core set of environmental policy goals for which every government can be – and should be – held accountable. By identifying specific targets and measuring the distance between the target and current national achievement, the EPI provides both an empirical foundation for policy analysis and a context for evaluating performance. Issue-by-issue and aggregate rankings facilitate cross-country comparisons both globally and within relevant peer groups such as geography or economy.
It must be emphasized that the EPI’s real value lies not in the numerical rankings, but rather in careful analysis of the underlying data and performance metrics. The results are displayed in numerous ways: by issue, policy category, peer group, and country. This format facilitates identification of leaders and laggards, highlights best policy practices for each issue, and identifies priorities for action for each country. More generally, the EPI provides a powerful tool for steering environmental investments, refining policy choices, optimizing the impact of limited financial resources, and understanding the determinants of policy results.
