ConservationBytes.com

Everyone is a at least a little competitive, and when it comes to international relations, there could be no higher incentive for trying to do better than your neighbours than a bit of nationalism (just think of the Olympics).

We rank the world’s countries for pretty much everything, relative wealth, health, governance quality and even happiness. There are also many, many different types of ‘environmental’ indices ranking countries. Some attempt to get at that nebulous concept of ‘sustainability’, some incorporate human health indices, and other are just plain black box (see Böhringer et al. 2007 for a review).

With that in mind, we have just published a robust (i.e., to missing data, choices for thresholds, etc.), readily quantifiable (data available for most countries) and objective (no arbitrary weighting systems) index of a country’s relative environmental impact that focuses ONLY on environment (i.e., not human health or economic indicators) – something no other metric does. We also looked at indices relative to opportunity – that is, looking at how much each country has degraded relative to what it had to start with.

We used the following metrics to create a combined environmental impact rank: natural forest loss, habitat conversion, fisheries and other marine captures, fertiliser use, water pollution, carbon emissions from land-use change and threatened species.

The paper, entitled Evaluating the relative environmental impact of countries was just published in the open-access journal PLoS One with my colleagues Navjot Sodhi of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Xingli Giam, formerly of NUS but now at Princeton University in the USA.

So who were the worst? Relative to resource availability (i.e,. how much forest area, coastline, water, arable land, species, etc. each country has), the proportional environmental impact ranked (from worst) the following ten countries:

1. Singapore
2. Korea
3. Qatar
4. Kuwait
5. Japan
6. Thailand
7. Bahrain
8. Malaysia
9. Philippines
10. Netherlands

When considering just the absolute impact (i.e., not controlling for resource availability), the worst ten were:

1. Brazil
2. USA
3. China
4. Indonesia
5. Japan
6. Mexico
7. India
8. Russia
9. Australia
10. Peru

Interestingly (and quite unexpectedly), the authors’ home countries (Singapore, Australia, USA) were in either the worst ten proportional or absolute ranks. Embarrassing, really (for a full list of all countries, see supporting information).

Of particular note was that many Asian countries (e.g., China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines) had both poor proportional and absolute environmental records, suggesting that the pace and magnitude of environmental degradation in these countries is particularly acute.

Now, I appreciate that some readers might thinking that rankings are a bit dry; however, our analysis extended beyond a mere ranking (even though the ranking itself is, in our opinion, the most robust metric out there; we also tested everything for sensitivity, and the metrics prove to be pretty robust). We attempted to tease apart the likely mechanisms driving degradation (at least, indirectly). We have shown quite convincingly that wealth (as measured by purchasing-power parity-adjusted Gross National Income – an admittedly blunt instrument to measure relative wealth) is the key driver of environmental degradation, not population size per se.

There was no evidence to support the popular idea that environmental degradation plateaus or declines past a certain threshold of per capital wealth (known as the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis). It’s quite striking really – the richer you are, the more damage you do (relatively and absolutely).

The University of Adelaide press release follows below:

A new study led by the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute has ranked most of the world’s countries for their environmental impact.

The research uses seven indicators of environmental degradation to form two rankings – a proportional environmental impact index, where impact is measured against total resource availability, and an absolute environmental impact index measuring total environmental degradation at a global scale.

Led by the Environment Institute’s Director of Ecological Modelling Professor Corey Bradshaw, the study has been published in the on-line, peer-reviewed science journal PLoS ONE.

The world’s 10 worst environmental performers according to the proportional environmental impact index (relative to resource availability) are: Singapore, Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Bahrain, Malaysia, Philippines and Netherlands.

In absolute global terms, the 10 countries with the worst environmental impact are (in order, worst first): Brazil, USA, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.

The indicators used were natural forest loss, habitat conversion, fisheries and other marine captures, fertiliser use, water pollution, carbon emissions from land use and species threat.

“The environmental crises currently gripping the planet are the corollary of excessive human consumption of natural resources,” said Professor Bradshaw. “There is considerable and mounting evidence that elevated degradation and loss of habitats and species are compromising ecosystems that sustain the quality of life for billions of people worldwide.”

Professor Bradshaw said these indices were robust and comprehensive and, unlike existing rankings, deliberately avoided including human health and economic data – measuring environmental impact only.

The study, in collaboration with the National University of Singapore and Princeton University, found that the total wealth of a country (measured by gross national income) was the most important driver of environmental impact.

“We correlated rankings against three socio-economic variables (human population size, gross national income and governance quality) and found that total wealth was the most important explanatory variable – the richer a country, the greater its average environmental impact,” Professor Bradshaw said.

There was no evidence to support the popular idea that environmental degradation plateaus or declines past a certain threshold of per capital wealth (known as the Kuznets curve hypothesis).

“There is a theory that as wealth increases, nations have more access to clean technology and become more environmentally aware so that the environmental impact starts to decline. This wasn’t supported,” he said.

CJA Bradshaw

Bradshaw, C.J.A., Giam, X., & Sodhi, N.S. (2010). Evaluating the Relative Environmental Impact of Countries PLoS ONE, 5 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010440