Yale University and Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, recently released their “2022 Environmental Performance Index” (2022 EPI) report which utilizes environmental metrics in order to track countries’ progress when it comes to meeting their environmental policy targets outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In detail, the 2022 EPI assesses the performance of 180 countries across 40 performance indicators (up from 32 in previous EPI reports) belonging to eleven main categories that are classified within three fundamental dimensions of sustainable development, namely, health, ecosystem vitality and climate policy. The updated version of the EPI also supports the goals highlighted in the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact which is targeting 0 greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by means of 4 new air quality indicators tailored specifically to track countries’ progress towards reaching said goal. In this vein, the report revealed that only a handful of countries (including Denmark and the United Kingdom) are expected to reach the aforementioned goal on time. On the other hand, the report noted that unless climate policies are strengthened, four countries (China, India, United States, and Russia) will be responsible for 50% of residual global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and 24 countries (including the 4 countries mentioned earlier) will account for 80% of total emissions.

As far as results are concerned, the report revealed that the overall median score of the world stood at 42 in the 2022 EPI. On a regional basis, the Global West region achieved the highest median score among all regions included in the index (62.5), followed by Eastern Europe (55.9), Latin America & the Carribean (45.8) and Greater Middle East (35), only to name a few. With respect to the countries in the 2022 EPI, Denmark topped the list of rankings with an overall score of 77.90. It is worth noting that a score of 0 refers to worst performance while a score of 100 refers to best. Denmark was followed by the United Kingdom (score: 77.70) and Finland (score: 76.50). Regionally, the United Arab Emirates emerged as the best performer in the 2022 EPI with an overall score of 52.40 and a global rank of 39, followed by Djibouti (score: 47.50; global rank: 60), Jordan (score: 43.60; global rank: 81), and Comoros (score: 42.50; global rank: 85). Lebanon ranked 11^th on a regional basis and 142^nd in the world, scoring 32.20 in the 2022 Environmental Performance Index. The country’s best performance was at the level of the “sanitation drinking water” (score: 59.80; global rank: 53) and “waste management” (score: 44.40; global rank: 60) sub-indicators, while it performed most poorly on each of the “biodiversity” (score: 12.80; global rank: 169) and the “fisheries” (score: 15.40; global rank: 94) fronts.