Environmental Performance Index, 2018

What is the issue?

India ranks 177 among 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index 2018.
A drop in the index from previous year calls for a relook at the country's environmental policy.

What is the Environmental Performance Index?

EPI is a biennial report by Yale and Columbia Universities along with the World Economic Forum.
The report ranks 180 countries on 24 performance indicators.
It is spread across 10 categories covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality.
Switzerland leads the world in sustainability, followed by France, Denmark, Malta and Sweden in the recent EPI.

What is India's status?

India is among the bottom 5 countries on the index, at 177th place.
This is a drop of 36 points from 141 in 2016.
Emerging peer economies, Brazil and China, ranks 69 and 120, respectively.
In the environmental health category, India is at the bottom of the list.
And in terms of air quality it is placed third last.
The overall drop is attributed to poor performance in the environment health policy and high pollution related deaths.
Pollution from solid fuels, coal and crop residue burning, and emissions from motor vehicles are the major causes.
Population growth, industrial production and automotive transportation continue to increasingly degrade the air quality.

Why is environmental degradation a serious concern?

Environmental degradation is beyond being seen as just a cost of development.
Health - The report highlights air quality as the leading environmental threat to public health.
In India, deaths attributed to ultra-fine PM2.5 pollutants have largely risen over the past decade.
Air pollution is causing an estimated 1.4 million premature deaths in India.
Economy - The above rate translates to a welfare loss equivalent to around 8% of India’s GDP in 2013.
In addition, the cost of lost labour productivity was nearly 0.8% of GDP.
Even these estimates do not reflect a true picture of the impact.
This is because the lack of scientific understanding of several other key ecological impacts limits the impact assessment.
Sadly, the poor are affected disproportionately because of environmental degradation.

What are the measures in this regard?

The government has set some ambitious targets for environmental protection in the recent years.
It includes:

strict environmental standards for coal-fired power plants
target to implement Bharat Stage VI emission norms from April 1, 2020
efforts to produce and sell electric vehicles in the country by 2030
revision of National Solar Mission, accelerating transition to renewable sources of power
accordingly, revising the target for setting up solar capacity from 20 GW to 100 GW by 2021-22
assurance to clean up highly polluted Ganga by 2018

What are the shortfalls?

Unfortunately, there appears to be a big gap between policy goals and action.
India seems to be moving in the right direction on solar targets.
However, balancing it with other goals is seriously lacking.
Evidently, the promise of implementing strict power plant emission norms by December 2017 has been relaxed.
Annual electronic waste collection target for electronics manufacturers was set at 30% of the products sold in the market.
However, this has now been relaxed to 10%.
The automobile industry has stated that full conversion to electric vehicles was realistically possible only by 2047.
This is in contrast to the government's targets.
CAG, in a recent report, highlighted the lag in developing an action plan and poor fund utilisation in the clean-up of the Ganga.

What should be done?

The environmental costs of development should be duly recognised in addressing environmental problems.
Transition to renewables, especially solar energy, should be accelerated by offering subsidies.
On the other hand, the more polluting fuels should be priced higher.
Strict environmental standards for coal plants should be put in place.
Similarly, the transition to electric vehicle use should be aided by higher pricing of petrol and diesel.
Existing environmental laws and regulations should be implemented properly with more political will.
The country's poor environmental performance calls for taking forward the environmental targets more seriously.

Source: The Hindu