Environmental Performance Index by Country 2024

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) looks at multiple factors to determine how close countries are to international environmental policy aims and how they compare to other nations. Policymakers can use the EPI to make decisions driving their countries' environmental agendas toward common international goals.

Factors Used in the Environmental Performance Index

Overall, the EPI determines the degree to which a country works toward mitigation of climate change, ensuring ecosystem vitality, and maintaining environmental health.

The EPI uses data from 11 separate categories to calculate the overall value. Environmental issue categories used for the EPI include acid rain, air quality, agriculture, biodiversity, climate change mitigation, drinking water and sanitation, ecosystem services, fisheries, heavy metals, waste management, and water resources. Across these categories, the system uses 40 measurements of a country's performance.

What the Environmental Performance Index Means

Countries that have high EPI values show exceptional performance in having effective policies for environmental health. A low value indicates that a country does not perform as well as other nations in working toward international environmental policy goals.

Additionally, the EPI shows the change over the most recent ten-year period. This change value is important in showing the direction that a country has moved in its environmental policies. Nations that have positive score changes over the last ten years have overall better environmental performance compared to countries with negative changes to their scores.

Some countries with relatively low scores show dramatic improvement over time, showing that these nations are actively working toward implementing better environmental policies. For example, in 2022, Malta had a dramatic 25.40-point increase in its EPI compared to 2012. Afghanistan had a similarly large increase in its EPI over the ten years from 2012 to 2022 of 23.90, more than doubling its score to 43.60 in 2022.

Countries with the Highest and Lowest Environmental Performance Indicies

The EPI comes out in even-numbered years, which means as of 2023, the most recent scores come from 2022. That year, the countries with the highest EPI were Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, Malta, and Sweden. The highest EPI of these, for Denmark, was 77.90. The nation with the lowest score in the top five, Sweden, had an EPI of 72.70.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the countries with the lowest EPI scores. India ranked as the lowest of the 180 nations evaluated with an EPI of 18.90.