Iceland Tops Global Environmental Performance Stats

New data was published on January 28th 2010 which highlighted the world’s most environmentally friendly countries.

Published by a team of US scientists including representatives of Columbia and Yale Universities, the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (abbreviated to ‘EPI’) put Iceland in first place, signifying that it’s this country which surpassed all others in terms of deploying environmentally friendly strategies and drawing on environmentally friendly technologies.

163 countries were assessed, in all, and their positions were dictated by looking at how they fared in terms of ten key issues.

Among these issues were:

• Environmental Health
• Air Quality
• Water Resource Management
• Biodiversity/ Habitat
• Forestry
• Fisheries
• Agriculture
• Climate Change

Most Environmental Countries

With Iceland at the top, the other nine countries that made up the top ten in the EPI’s list of the most environmental countries were Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway, Mauritius, France, Austria, Cuba and Columbia.

The UK was placed 14th, while the US came in 61st – over one third of the way down.

China, meanwhile, was number 121, and Sierra Leone was considered the least most active environmental performer.

Environmental Performance Index

Two previous Environmental Performance Indexes have been unleashed on the world and, in 2008, it was Switzerland that claimed top honours. Iceland – this year’s top performer – was then in 11th place. Two years before that, Iceland had been two places lower, while New Zealand took pole position.

Iceland derives almost 100 per cent of its power from renewable energy sources, such as geothermal energy.

“Countries that take seriously the environment as a policy challenge do improve, and those that don’t deteriorate”, Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy’s director, Daniel C. Esty, stated. “Both the US and China are suffering because they’re industrial and haven’t been paying much attention to environmental policy.”

In related news, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China highlighted on the same day how China’s pollution remained a big problem in spite of attempts by the government there to redress the situation. The council conceded that improvements were evident in some areas, such as water purification and provision of drinking water, but much more could still be done, it said – according to comments on the Chinese government’s website.