The report on Environmental Performance Index 2022prepared byresearchers at Yale University and Columbia University has drawn conclusions about countries with respect to their environmental health, ecosystem vitality and Climate Change related policy based on metrics with several parameters that are unscientific and subjective.

For instance, the indicator Projected Emission levels in 2050 under the Climate Change Policy objective indicator is computed based on average rate of change in emission of the last 10 years instead of modelling that takes into account a longer time period, extent of renewable energy capacity and use, additional carbon sinks, energy efficiency etc. of respective countries whereas Fig 1 of the said report based on Global Carbon Budget 2021, itself shows that India has one of the lowest emission trajectories vis a vis other Countries. Hence, without factoring in this aspect, the use of biased metrics has resulted in a low rank. Further, the above parameter has a weight of nearly 14% in the index vis a vis an equity based indicator like GHG emission per capita with a weight of only 1%.

This shows that the methodology used in the EPI ranking suffers from many discrepancies including inter alia no specific rationale for weightage assigned to indicators, a flawed model to compute parameters like projected emissions where carbon removals are not accounted for and absence of important parameters of sustainability like energy efficiency or indicators that truly capture ecosystem productivity.

The index factors in the extent of ecosystems but the regulatory, provisioning as well as cultural services provided by various ecosystems contributing to productivity like forests, wetlands, croplands are not assessed and reflected in performance.

With only two indicators under the Agriculture issue category, the efforts of India or other developing countries towards the improvement of their agricultural sector and practices such as Agro biodiversity, water use efficiency and soil health are not reflected in the index.  Similarly, there are no indicators of Renewable Energy efficiency or installed capacity to measure the factor of sustainable or efficient energy use of a country. Thus the index does not consider several important indicators of sustainable consumption and production.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Shri Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

 

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