Yale University and Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, recently released their “2024 Environmental Performance Index” (2024 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 details, the 2024 EPI assesses the performance of 180 countries across 58 performance indicators (up from 40 in the 2022 EPI report and from 32 in previous reports) belonging to eleven main categories that are classified within three fundamental dimensions of sustainable development, namely, environmental health (25% weight in the index), ecosystem vitality (45% weight in the index) and climate change (30% weight in the index). According to the report, the 2024 EPI introduced a new set of refined metrics to better track countries’ progress at reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The report noted that while GHG emissions are dropping in more countries than ever, the analysis conducted by the 2024 EPI on emission trends over the last decade showed that only five countries (namely Estonia, Finland, Greece, Timor-Leste, and the United Kingdom) managed to reduce their GHG emissions by the rate needed to attain zero by 2050. The report commented, however, that it remains unclear whether any of these countries will be able to preserve their pace of reduction until the year 2050. In addition, the report revealed that emissions in the world’s largest economies are either dropping at a snail’s pace (such as in the United States) or still increasing (such as in China, India, and Russia).

As far as results are concerned, the Global West region achieved the highest median score among all regions included in the index (66.9), followed by Eastern Europe (59.9), Latin America & the Carribean (48.9), Former Soviet States (45.2) and Greater Middle East (43.2), only to name a few. With respect to the countries in the 2024 EPI, Estonia topped the list of rankings with an overall score of 75.3. It is worth noting that a score of 0 refers to worst performance while a score of 100 refers to best. Estonia was followed by Luxembourg (score: 75.0) and Germany (score: 74.6). Regionally, the United Arab Emirates emerged as the best performer in the 2024 EPI with an overall score of 52.0 and a global rank of 53, followed by Oman (score: 51.9; global rank: 54), Jordan (score: 47.5; global rank: 74), and Qatar (score: 47.2; global rank: 79). Lebanon ranked 10^th on a regional basis and 124^th in the world, scoring 40.1 in the 2024 Environmental Performance Index. The country’s best performance was at the level of the “fisheries” (score: 96.2; global rank: 4) and “sanitation drinking water” (score: 63.2; global rank: 71) sub-indicators, while it performed most poorly in each of the “biodiversity & habitat” (score: 24.1; global rank: 161) and the “climate change mitigation” (score: 38.0; global rank: 113) fronts.