The Environmental Performance Index 2022 report, prepared by researchers at Yale University and Columbia University, made inferences about countries regarding their environmental health, ecosystem vitality and climate change policy based on multi-parameter metrics that are unscientific and subjective. For example, the Projected emission levels in 2050 indicator under the Climate Change Policy target indicator is calculated based on the average rate of change of emissions over the last 10 years instead of modeling that takes into account a longer time period, the extent of renewable energy capacity and use, further carbon sinks, energy efficiency etc. of respective countries, while it said report based on Global Carbon Budget 2021 itself shows that India has one of the lowest emission trajectories compared to other countries.
Thus, without taking this aspect into account, the use of biased metrics resulted in a low rating. Furthermore, the above parameter has a weight of almost 14% in the index compared to a stock-based indicator such as per capita greenhouse gas emissions with a weight of only 1%. This shows that the methodology used in the EPI ranking suffers from many inconsistencies, including but not limited to no specific justification for the weight assigned to the indicators, a flawed model for calculating parameters such as projected emissions where carbon removal is not taken into account, and the absence of important sustainability parameters such as is, for example, energy efficiency or indicators that really capture the productivity of the ecosystem.
Ecosystem-wide index factors, but the regulatory, supply and cultural services provided by various ecosystems contributing to productivity, such as forests, wetlands, arable land, are not evaluated and taken into account in performance. With only two indicators in the Agriculture category, the index does not reflect efforts by India or other developing countries to improve their agricultural sector and practices such as agricultural biodiversity, water use efficiency and soil health. Similarly, there are no renewable energy efficiency or installed capacity indicators to measure a country’s sustainable or efficient energy use factor. Thus, the index does not take into account several important indicators of sustainable consumption and production. This information was given by the Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Shri Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.
