NYT: Study Shows Only Six Nations Achieved Environmental Goals

[DeepModem Mom]

Study Shows Only Six Nations Achieved Environmental Goals
By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: January 23, 2006


WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - 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....


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/science/22cnd-environment.html

[PDJane]

1. The study is available

In PDF form at http://www.yale.edu/esi/

[Lisa]

2. thanks!m (n/t)

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Thanks, PDJane!