Pilot Environmental Sustainability Index

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Pilot Environmental Sustainability Index

• Presentation to ISPS Interdisciplinary Faculty
  Discussion Seminar on the Environment
• Dan Esty, Yale
• Marc Levy, Columbia
• May 5, 2000

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The Environmental Sustainability Index is the
result of a partnership involving

• Global Leaders for Tomorrow Environment Task
  Force, World Economic Forum (Kim Samuel-Johnson,
  Chair)
• Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy
  (YCELP), Yale University (Dan Esty)
• Center for International Earth Science
  Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University
  (Marc Levy)
• The report can be obtained at these web sites
• http//www.ciesin.org/indicators/ESI/pilot_esi.htm
  l
• http//www.yale.edu/envirocenter/research/esi.html
  
• http//weforum.com/pdf/glt/glt_esi_2000.pdf

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The Need for an Environmental Sustainability Index

• Counterpart to Competitiveness ndex and other
  economic performance measures
• Benchmark environmental performance
• Better goals, programs, and policies
• Clarify environment/economic tradeoffs

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Pilot ESI Builds on Work of

• OECD
• UN Commission on Sustainable Development
• Consultative Group on Sustainable Development
  Indicators
• Numerous other local, national, and international
  efforts

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Our Objectives

• Create an index that
• Provides comparability across a wide range of
  countries
• Focuses on environmental aspects of
  sustainability
• Expresses results as a single number per economy,
  but permits more sophisticated disaggregation and
  analysis
• Builds on an analytic foundation
• Serves as a working prototype meant to encourage
  debate, dialogue, learning

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Preliminary Results

• 4th quintile
• Algeria
• Bulgaria
• China
• Egypt
• El Salvador
• Gabon
• Ghana
• Guatemala
• Mali
• Mauritius
• Nicaragua
• Pakistan
• Romania
• South Africa
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• Zimbabwe

• 3rd quintile
• Botswana
• Colombia
• Cuba
• Czech Rep
• Greece
• India
• Indonesia
• Jordan
• Korea, Rep
• Malaysia
• Mexico
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Nepal
• Philippines
• Thailand
• Ukraine

• 5th quintile
• Bangladesh
• Cameroon
• Honduras
• Iran
• Kenya
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Moldova
• Nigeria
• Peru
• Senegal
• Singapore
• Sri Lanka
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Vietnam
• Zambia

• 2nd quintile
• Argentina
• Belgium
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Chile
• Costa Rica
• Ecuador
• Hungary
• Israel
• Italy
• Lithuania, Rep
• Paraguay
• Poland, Rep
• Portugal
• Russian Federation
• Spain
• Uruguay
• Venezuela

• Top quintile
• Australia
• Austria
• Canada
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Iceland
• Ireland
• Japan
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Slovak Rep
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

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High numbers correspond to greater levels of
environmental sustainability
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• Environmental Stresses
• Air Pollution
• Water Pollution/Use
• Ecosystem Stress
• Waste/Consumption
• Population

• Environmental Systems
• Urban Air Quality
• Water Quantity
• Water Quality
• Biodiversity
• Land

Analytical Foundations

• Social and Institutional Capacity
• Science/Technical Capacity
• Rigorous Policy Debate
• Environmental Regulation and Management
• Tracking Environmental Conditions
• Eco-efficiency
• Public Choice Failures

• Global Stewardship
• Contribution to International Cooperation
• Impact on Global Commons

• Human Vulnerability
• Basic Sustenance
• Public Health
• Environmental Disasters

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Empirical Inputs

• For each factor, we identified 1-6 variables to
  serve as quantitative measures (65 total)
• For this pilot, we weighted the factors equally
  in computing the Index

5 components
65 variables
21 factors
Index
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Example Social and Institutional Capacity
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Example Social and Institutional Capacity
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Example Social and Institutional Capacity
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Putting the Index to Use Assessing
Environment/Economic Tradeoffs
As hypothesized by Michael Porter, there may be a
connection between good economic performance and
good environmental performance
Environmental sustainability does not appear to
impose a constraint on economic growth
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Among Similar Economies the Importance of Choice
is Clear
How vigorously to pursue environmental
sustainability, and how vigorously to pursue
economic growth, appear to be two separate choices
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Why does this matter? Four perspectives on the
relationship between economic performance and
environmental sustainability
Difficult tradeoffs policy dilemmas
Environmental Kuznets just be patient
Environment
Economics
Good things go together policy free lunch
Good indicators are vital
All combinations are possible importance of
responsible policy choices
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Conclusions(Does the world really need another
environmental indicator?)

• Measuring environmental sustainability is
  possible and useful
• This is a surprising, and encouraging, result
• Some aspects appear to be easier to quantify than
  others
• Some surprises here (capacity v. stress)

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Conclusions

• A future ESI can improve on the Pilot
• Investment in data creation
• Most global environmental monitoring programs are
  based on 19th century models time to move
  forward
• Pluralistic, distributed networks (no central
  bottlenecks)
• Greater use of civil society
• Remote sensing and other advanced technologies
• More sophisticated methods to weight factors and
  test validity, understand underlying assumptions
  and values
• Factor analysis, time series analysis, regression
  analysis
• Interactive, open version
• Permit users to change factors and variables,
  change weights, add new variables
• Scalable version
• Permit users to integrate global, national,
  regional and local indicators as appropriate to
  their needs

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Project Status

• Pilot
• Pilot Index presented in Davos 1-31-00
• Detailed peer-reviewed critiques prepared
  February-April, 2000
• Presentations to various policy and academic fora
• Detailed review within several organizations and
  governments
• 2001 Index
• Reviewing results of peer reviews and other
  commentary
• Planning refinements in methods, improvements in
  data, expansion of country coverage.
• Considering devoting special effort to a
  particular sector (e.g. water)
• To be released January 2001

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Payoff

• Strengthen quality of scholarly debates and
  research programs
• Enhance assessment of national environmental
  performance greater accountability
• Improve formulation of policy targets and
  priorities (identifying critical weaknesses)