Developed by researchers at Yale in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the Environmental Performance Index was established in 2006 with a focus on two broad environmental protection objectives:

1. reducing environmental stresses on human health and
2. protecting an ecosystem’s vitality.

To find out where your country stands in this pilot EPI, read on more.

The EPI centers on two broad environmental protection objectives:

1. reducing environmental stresses on human health
2. protecting ecosystem vitality.

Environmental health and ecosystem vitality are gauged using sixteen indicators tracked in six established policy categories:

• Environmental Health,
• Air Quality, Water Resources,
• Biodiversity and Habitat,
• Productive Natural Resources, and
• Sustainable Energy.

The EPI complements a separate index, the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). The ESI is a gauge of a country's long-term environmental trajectory, whereas the EPI focuses on a country's current environmental performance. For more on the two indexes, see the complete literature on the EPI and the ESI at www.yale.edu/epi/ .

Source: Developed by the Center for Environmental Law & Policy at Yale University and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.