New Delhi, June 8 (Agency) India on Wednesday rejected the Environmental Performance Index 2022 which ranked the country at the bottom of 180 countries, saying it has many indicators based on unfounded assumptions. “Some of these indicators used for assessing performance are extrapolated and based on surmises and unscientific methods,” The Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change said in a statement. The index published by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University, used 40 performance indicators across 11 categories to judge countries on climate change performance, environmental health and ecosystem vitality.
The EPI 2022 report says: “Based on the latest scientific insights and environmental data, India ranks at the bottom of all countries in the 2022 EPI, with low scores across a range of critical issues.” The Ministry said: “A new indicator in the Climate Policy objective is Projected GHG Emissions levels in 2050. This is computed based on the 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.” It said that forests and wetlands are crucial carbon sinks which have not been factored in while computing the projected GHG emissions trajectory up to 2050 given by EPI 2022. Historical data on the lowest emission trajectory has been ignored in the above computation, the Ministry said.
The Ministry claimed that the weight of indicators in which the country was performing well has been reduced and reasons for change in assignment of weights has not been explained in the report. “The principle of equity is given very low weightage in the form of indicators like GHG emission per capita and GHG Emission intensity trend. The CBDR-RC principle is also barely reflected in the composition of the index,” the Ministry said. Criticising the methodology, the Ministry said the index computes the extent of ecosystems but not their condition or productivity. The EPI is a biennial index. It quantifies and numerically ranks the environmental performance of a country based on the three broad issues of ecosystem vitality, health and climate policy.